


Still a Hero

by elyvorg



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: (though Kaito himself is not a minor in this), (very heavy on the hurt but there is comfort in the end I promise), Beating, Brief sort-of-suicidal thoughts, Character Development, Drowning, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Issues, Poisoning, Psychological Torture, References to torture and emotional abuse of children, Torture, Ultimate Talent Development Plan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24145141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elyvorg/pseuds/elyvorg
Summary: With Kaito and his sidekicks in hiding as Shuichi investigates Maki’s assassin cult in order to take it down, Kaito finds himself captured, alone. It’s only Shuichi and Maki they want dead, not him – but since he knows his sidekicks’ whereabouts, the cult intends to torture Kaito until he tells them.If Kaito can’t hold out against this, if he lets the torture break him, he will fail his sidekicks in the worst possible way, bygetting them killed.Good thing Kaito’s ahero, then – because heroes don’t let anything faze them. Not even a little.
Relationships: Harukawa Maki & Momota Kaito & Saihara Shuichi
Comments: 36
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 0 – Vulnerable

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an AU story idea of mine set in the Ultimate Talent Development Plan universe shortly after everyone graduates. While all the necessary wider story context should hopefully be clear enough in-fic, you can also check out [a post on my tumblr](https://elyvorg.tumblr.com/post/613056219124531200/the-ultimate-talent-development-plan-au-is-the-one) summarising the overall story of this AU if you’re interested in knowing more. (Parts 1, 2 and 3 described in that post are canon to this fic. Part 4 is not; this is essentially an alternate ending to that one.)
> 
> Also, here’s a [cover art](https://elyvorg.tumblr.com/post/617917660164997120/still-a-hero-ao3-remember-my-utdp) that I drew.
> 
> (Please ignore AO3's chapter numbers; apparently they haven't heard of prologues here?)

“Kaito’s missing,” Shuichi said the moment he burst into the hideout, so frantic that he almost forgot to shut the door behind him. He was panting from having practically run the whole way back, and his heart was pounding from more than just that.

Maki stood up instantly, fixing him with an alarmed gaze.

“I… Ah, I… J-Just look.” Shuichi gave up getting words around it and simply held out the purple jacket and the slippers he’d found on the ground near where Kaito should have been. “It looked like he’d lost them in a struggle. There was no trace of blood, and I didn’t find a…” He cut off that train of thought right there; that didn’t bear thinking about. “S-So, I think, I think they took him alive. But why would they even do that? Didn’t you say they had no reason to target him?”

Maki’s expression had grown increasingly dark as Shuichi spoke. She turned away from him, her shoulders tensed. “They don’t have a reason to _kill_ him, but they have every reason to capture him alive, now that he’s working with us.” She balled her hands into fists, her words careful and measured, like they’d explode out of her if she didn’t control them. “They’re going to torture him until he tells them where to find us.”

Shuichi’s heart dropped to his stomach.

“N-No…” he mumbled, putting a hand to his mouth in horror. “Kaito…!” He pictured Kaito – carefree, confident, ridiculous Kaito – being put through… no, no no no, it was wrong, it was awful. Shuichi felt sick.

“A-Are you sure?” he couldn’t help but ask, though he knew it was a pointless question. He remembered the stories Maki had told them of what the cult had done to _her_. She wouldn’t say this if she didn’t mean it.

“Very sure.”

Shuichi’s mind was reeling. This wasn’t _fair_. He and Maki were the ones the cult was after; Kaito had done nothing to them. And yet, all because of Shuichi’s investigation, he was…

As Shuichi stood frozen, Maki brushed past him towards the door, still not meeting his eye. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said, one hand already on the handle. “I’m going to get him out of there. Are you coming or not?”

“I – wait!” Shuichi caught up with what she was thinking, and he hurriedly reached out to grab her other wrist. “Maki, calm down! I know how you feel; I want to save him, too, but – we can’t just go storming their headquarters alone. We’d be giving them exactly what they want. They’d kill us.” He moved to get a better view of her face, trying to encourage her to look back at him. “Kaito wouldn’t want us to get ourselves killed for him. You know he wouldn’t.”

Maki turned further away. “Then what else are we supposed to do? If we don’t save him, he’ll tell them where to find us and we’ll be dead anyway.”

“No, he won’t tell them anything,” Shuichi said. “We need to keep going as we were; if I can just finish my invest—”

Maki wrenched her arm out of his grip and whirled to face him. “They’ll be _torturing him_!” Her eyes met Shuichi’s for the first time, wild and frantic and terrifying. “Don’t you get it? Kaito isn’t some kind of fairytale hero like you seem to think! He’s not invincible!”

“I _know_ he’s not!” Shuichi shot back. “I know.” ( _Had_ he ever thought that about Kaito? He wasn’t sure… but it didn’t matter any more.) He dropped Maki’s gaze, grimacing. “I know he’s going to be hurt, and scared, and suffering, and I hate it, I hate it just as much as you do.” As he spoke, he clutched Kaito’s jacket tighter to his chest on instinct as if doing so could somehow support Kaito wherever he was. “But… he won’t give in. He won’t betray us. I’m sure of it.”

The fire faded somewhat from Maki’s eyes; there was a question in them instead.

Sensing he was getting through to her, Shuichi went on. “Kaito is going to be fighting so hard, being so strong for us. We need to be strong for him, too. We need to finish the investigation so that we can end the cult for good while keeping ourselves safe. I’m almost done – I promise, I don’t need much more – and then we can get him out of there, safely, with the authorities’ help. I hate that we have to let him suffer until then, I know, I hate it. But if we panic and put ourselves in more danger than necessary, we’d be betraying his wishes.”

Maki’s gaze softened further. “You… you really believe in him.” It was an observation, not a question.

“Of course I do!” Shuichi said without hesitation. “And I know you want to, as well. He never needed to be an invincible hero for you to believe in him before, right? All he did was care about us, so much, even more than he cares about himself. That’s all he needs. I _know_ he’s strong enough to get through this for our sakes.” He extended a hand to her. “Come on, Maki, please. Believe in Kaito with me.”

Maki stared at him for a moment longer, and then she took his hand, holding onto it tightly. Shuichi thought he could see just a flicker of a smile on her face as she glanced away. “Yeah. You’re right. He’s always been… such a stubborn idiot about things.”


	2. Chapter 1 – posturing

Kaito groaned as he came to, head pounding like crazy, on a cold concrete floor. He shook his head to try and clear it – bad move, that only made it hurt _more_ – and pushed himself upright. He was in some kind of large room, like a cellar or something, dimly-lit and mostly bare.

_The hell is this place? What am I doing here?_ The last thing he could recall was being grabbed from behind, struggling and shrugging his jacket off in an effort to get away but being caught again, and… they must’ve drugged him or something, because he didn’t remember anything past that.

The cult. The cult must have captured him. He heard footsteps approaching and turned his head to see five robed, masked figures striding towards him. Yeah, they looked like creepy-ass kid-enslaving cultists all right.

_Wait, never mind me, what about…_

“Maki Roll? Shuichi!?” Kaito sprang to his feet in an instant, whirling around, but there was no-one here but him and the cultists. He’d been scouting alone when he’d been grabbed, so his sidekicks _should_ still be safe, but…

He glared at the masked assholes, or tried to – easier said than done as they moved to surround him, uncomfortably close, and he couldn’t get all of them in his field of vision at once. “I swear to hell, if you’ve hurt them, if you’ve—”

Cold dread washed over him. They’d been out to _kill_ Maki Roll and Shuichi for defying them and trying to take them down. No, no, it couldn’t, that couldn’t—

“Harukawa and Saihara, you mean?” came a man’s voice from behind one of the masks. “We haven’t harmed either of them – yet.”

Right. Kaito had been right to think they were still safe. No need to panic. Maki Roll had said the hideout was somewhere the cult would never think to look, after all. They were _safe_.

But then… why had the cult captured _him_? He wasn’t someone they wanted dead (or he wouldn’t even still be here), so why…? With a creeping sense of apprehension, Kaito felt like he knew the answer already, but his mind just wouldn’t quite go there, like a spaceship skirting the event horizon of a black hole.

“The problem is that we don’t know where to find them,” continued the voice from before, and Kaito turned to face the speaker. Of all the masks, this guy’s had the most elaborate pattern; he was probably the one in charge of this little group. “But you do, don’t you? So you’re going to tell us.”

The spaceship abruptly swerved off-course, and it hit Kaito all at once.

Maki Roll had recounted one time how she’d been trained to withstand being tortured for information – casually as all hell, like that was a thing that was just _normal_ in her world. _“Dying sooner is the nicer way out. It’s much better than being tortured alive.”_

“Like _hell_ I am!” Kaito yelled. Like hell he was going to let _any_ of that shit happen to him! He fixed his sights on the room’s lone door at the far end and sprang into action – these idiots had been dumb enough not to tie him up, and who cared if they outnumbered him!?

He threw a punch at the nearest cultist, aiming to knock them flat and give himself a clear shot to the door, but it fell short as someone grabbed his hair from behind and yanked him backwards (he _knew_ ditching the hairstyle to lay low would have its downsides!). Someone else seized his punching arm in a firm grip, and as he tried to elbow the guy behind him who had his hair, a fist slammed into his stomach, making him double over with a grunt, and the next thing he knew his left arm was caught as well.

Kaito roared in frustration, struggling wildly in their grasp but not able to get himself to budge. Geez, the door was _right over there_ , he just had to—

The one grabbing his hair kicked him in the back of the knees, and his legs folded – and then his arms and hair were released just as another boot nailed him in the side and he collapsed to the floor. They didn’t let that stop them; they just kept kicking him, so many at once, laying into him from all angles.

Damn it, he wasn’t even tied up! He should have been able to fight back, do _something_ to stop them, but all he could do was just tense his muscles to absorb the impact of the blows and wait for it to be over.

This was fine, though. Kaito could handle this just _fine_ , no problem.

Eventually they laid off, giving Kaito a chance to breathe properly again and spit out the blood that had been pooling in his throat. He pushed himself back up onto his knees.

“Anyway, as I was saying,” came the leader’s voice. It occurred to Kaito that this guy hadn’t even taken part in what had happened just now, getting his henchmen to do all the work for him. “You are going to tell us where Harukawa and Saihara are hiding.”

“And like _I_ was saying,” Kaito growled between breaths, glaring up at him, “like _hell_ I am. Like hell I’m ever gonna let you have your way.”

“Is that so,” the leader drawled, sounding far too infuriatingly bored by all this. Kaito flinched as the leader’s boot drew close to his stomach and then cursed himself for doing so – it was just a gesture at the red kabuki make-up pattern on his t-shirt. “It looks like you fancy yourself as some kind of hero.”

Hah. Yeah. This was one of Kaito’s favourite shirts, for exactly that reason. It’d always felt appropriate that he’d happened to be wearing it the night Maki Roll had almost – the night they’d gone on the run. But it was even more appropriate now.

_Pah, ‘fancy myself’ as a hero. Like I couldn’t just_ be _one._

“Yeah, damn right I’m a hero,” Kaito told the leader with a fierce grin. “So there’s no way in hell you’re gonna scare me. That just now? That was nothing.”

“Really? Then you won’t mind if we do it again.”

Kaito let out a sharp gasp as the boot struck him savagely in the stomach after all, and then another hit him between his shoulder blades, and another, and another, and he was on the floor, and damn it, he couldn’t stop it, it was happening again.

He wished he hadn’t gasped. This was basically the same as last time, and he’d handled that just fine, so there was no need – okay, maybe this was a little worse than before, ‘cause he was already injured from last time, but _still_ , that didn’t change the fact that he could _handle it_. Maybe – maybe he was curled up a bit more, but that was just a defensive move to protect his vulnerable spots, nothing else. (They weren’t trying to kill him; they wouldn’t aim for his head. But still, just in case…)

Even so, even though this was still _basically nothing_ , perhaps… perhaps he’d avoid telling them that in future. Just to not provoke them into doing it any more than they already would have done.

When they were finished, Kaito uncurled himself and just lay there, breathing heavily. He spat out some more blood, trying to ignore the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.

It occurred to him that he should get up again – and he would, in just a moment. For now, he settled for glaring defiantly up at the leader (or at least in that vague direction; it was hard to see through his fringe) to make sure they all knew he wasn’t remotely beaten.

He could just about make out one of the masked figures, probably the leader, tilt his head as he looked down at Kaito. “Yes, I think I’ve rather got the measure of you already,” he said. “All your bluster and bravado is just meaningless posturing. You’re someone who _thinks_ he’s strong, nothing more. Rest assured, we know plenty of ways to break people like you.”

“ _What!_?” Every word of that filled Kaito with incensed indignation, spurring him to push himself up, to do _something_ to prove how obviously wrong they were. “What the hell are you t _grk!_ ”

A heavy boot pressed down on his back before he could rise, squashing the breath out of him and pinning him to the ground. All he could do was thrash his limbs, not able to get any kind of purchase to lever himself up – he tried grabbing at ankles, but that only got his hands stamped on.

As he struggled, one of them brought over something: a chunky, inflexible pair of handcuff-type things, attached to a steel cable in the middle that snaked off to somewhere above him. Realising what this meant, Kaito quit his flailing and tried to hide his hands beneath his body where they couldn’t get at them, but it was pointless. Two cultists grabbed his arms, one each, and yanked them forwards to where a third had unlocked the cuffs and was forcing his hands into them, all while the fourth’s boot still pressed heavily into his back, rendering him immobile.

The leader just stood there, not even helping, not even _needing_ to. It crossed Kaito’s mind that all of his frenzied struggles achieving nothing of value probably just made it look like he was proving the guy’s point, but like hell he was just gonna give in to them and _not_ try to fight back, dammit!

His hands firmly locked into the handcuffs despite his best efforts to prevent it, Kaito heard the whirring noise of a mechanism from above him, and the moment the boot on his back finally released him, he found his arms being pulled upwards, too far. With a yelp of surprise, he scrambled to get his legs beneath him and sit up to give his shoulders some relief. The cuffs pulled him up and up into an uncomfortably high kneeling position, against his body’s protests – seemed like they’d already managed to fracture a few ribs (not that it _mattered_ ; they’d heal).

Arms held over his head, unable to shield himself from anything, Kaito looked wildly around, and in the corner of his eye he could see they’d also brought over a box of… implements, which he promptly looked away from again.

_Freaking hell. This… this is really gonna happen, isn’t it?_

As if Maki Roll’s stories weren’t enough, everything about these assholes made it clear that they were _used_ to this. Hell, they had _equipment_ for this kind of thing.

His breathing was getting far too fast, so all at once he put that energy to good use, thrashing fervently against the handcuffs, tugging and jerking them again and again in the hope he could break the cable, or the metal railing way above him that it was attached to, or _something_ , roaring and snarling at his captors all the while. Maybe they really were going to do this, maybe he really couldn’t escape it, but damn it, he _wasn’t going to make this easy for them_!

“ _Cowards_!” he found himself shouting without really meaning to.

He saw the leader shift slightly at that, as if in bewilderment, so Kaito took a break from struggling to glare up at him, scowling as fiercely as he could, hissing breaths through gritted teeth. “Yeah, you heard me. You’re cowards. You couldn’t attack me without outnumbering me, and now you’ve gotta tie me up so I can’t fight back.” He yanked again at the cuffs, mostly just to make his point, but the cable still wouldn’t freaking _budge_. “You can’t even look at me with your own _faces_ , hiding behind masks like you’re afraid to admit this is _you_ doing all this.”

They weren’t responding, but that was _good_. That meant he was giving them pause, making them think.

“And this is the same kind of crap you do to the _kids_ , isn’t it?” Kaito went on in disgust. They’d done stuff like this to _Maki Roll_ , while she was still just a kid – and to so many other kids besides her. Thinking about it made his blood boil. “Children, who’re weaker than you in the first place, _orphans_ who don’t have anyone to protect them. You’re all _cowards_.”

The leader’s mask tilted slightly. “Are you saying this in some kind of attempt to get through to us? Do you think your words can _change_ us?”

Kaito scoffed. “Not a chance. Anyone can tell you’re too far gone to ever want to change. I mean, _geez_ , just look at your masks.” It wasn’t just any old pattern on them, he’d realised – it was the same kind of kabuki make-up pattern as his t-shirt, only blue. It seemed fitting: the captured hero, defiantly protecting his sidekicks from the villains. “You already _know_ you’re the bad guys.”

“Then why did you bother saying anything at all?”

“I – huh?” Kaito paused, his scowl dropping. He couldn’t quite find an answer to that.

“More importantly,” the leader continued, before Kaito could think of anything else to say, “I doubt you will take it, but I feel it’s only fair to give you one more chance to make this easy on yourself. Because one way or another, sooner or later, we will make you tell us where your associates are.”

Kaito had stopped bothering to look at him, instead just watching the pattern on his own t-shirt rise and fall with his breathing.

“So if you happened to be sensible enough to want to avoid a lot of needless suffering, you should just tell us now, before we really get started. This here was barely even the beginning, and I assure you, we _will_ break you in the end.”

No. He was a hero, so he could do this. Whatever they had in store for him, he could handle it. He had to.

So he looked back up at the leader, pushing his most determined grin onto his face. “C’mon, man, seriously? A hero’d never betray his sidekicks! Who the hell do you think I am!? I’m Kaito Momota! Luminary of the St _rrrgh—_ ”

Something long and heavy slammed into his back right at the key moment, and damn it, it didn’t sound quite as impressive when he got cut off like that.

“Yes, well,” said the leader as he turned away, still making his henchmen do all the dirty work like this wasn’t on _him_ , too. Another blow hit Kaito hard in the side, then one in his chest. “I imagined you would choose to do this the hard way.” The blows kept coming, and Kaito got the feeling they weren’t going to stop any time soon.

_Hah. The hard way? That’s not right at all. I’m protecting my sidekicks. This – this’ll be_ easy _._

And it wasn’t just Maki Roll and Shuichi, either. It was all of the kids, those held by the cult right now, and those who ever _would_ be in the future if things continued like this. There was Harumi, the girl from Maki Roll’s orphanage who was currently being scouted as her replacement, the tipping point that had pushed Maki Roll into finally wanting to end this herself. Kaito had chatted to Harumi himself once while visiting the orphanage; she was such a smart kid (and so excited by his stories of space!). He couldn’t let her, or any other child, fall into the cult’s clutches any longer. This was for all of them, too.

Shuichi and Maki Roll would be finishing up their investigation and coming to end things soon enough, in a matter of days. Kaito just had to hold on until then. No problem. Easy.

He was a hero. He couldn’t fail them. He _wouldn’t_ fail them.

Then, this beating the cultists had started giving him? Nothing he couldn’t handle. This was just a test of endurance, and he’d always been great at those. It was basically like training! …Much more gruelling and intense training than even Kaito was used to, sure, but like hell that was gonna stop him!

So he tensed his muscles to absorb the impacts and pushed himself to keep his breathing steady and rhythmic – or as much as he could when the blows _weren’t_ at all rhythmic and regular. It was more or less the same burning sensation he was used to from heavy exercise, only a little different, and… and maybe quite a bit worse, but still totally manageable. No big deal.

This was just a long workout; he should be able to slip into the same focused mindset he usually had during them and let all other thoughts melt into nothing. _Just focus. Breathe._ Now was definitely _not_ the time to be using his head or thinking about anything at all.

But for some reason, despite that, Kaito couldn’t quite stop lingering on the leader’s earlier words: _“someone who_ thinks _he’s strong”_. Which was a ridiculous thing to get hung up on, ‘cause it went without saying that that dumbass was wrong about him. He’d show them – he _was_ showing them, right now! He was the guy who was gonna explore the universe one day! There was no need to think twice about something stupid like this.

Kaito redoubled his focus on his breathing and his physical exertions – _just a workout, nothing else_ – and forced that thought to get washed away.


	3. Chapter 2 – helpless

He wasn’t sure how long the beating had gone on for. And he wasn’t thinking about how strained his grunts of exertion had been sounding towards the end of it, in a way that might have been making his captors think this was getting to him, because it hadn’t been. He’d been able to handle it just fine.

Kaito was alone in the room, the cuffs still on his hands but lowered enough that he could at least sit down. His head was resting against his suspended arms as he caught his breath, which was admittedly taking him quite a bit longer to do than it usually did even after a tough training session. Still, he’d get there soon.

He could really have used something to drink after all that, but of course they hadn’t given him anything. They… probably weren’t ever going to, were they. Or to eat, for that matter. That wasn’t a very fun thought.

He’d lost all sense of what time it was – there were no windows in the room, only dim fluorescent strips on the ceiling. Maybe it was night-time. That’d mean Shuichi and Maki Roll were doing their own training, safe in the hideout. At least, he hoped they would be.

Kaito wondered if the stars were out, out there. _Man… It’d be really nice to see them right now._

He was shivering. That made sense, though – it was cold down here (wherever the hell _here_ was) and he was only in a t-shirt and jeans.

His captors had left him alone for a while, apparently to give him ‘a chance to think’. The leader guy had told him again on the way out that things were only going to get worse from here. Geez, talk about a freaking stuck record.

_Tch, what the hell even is there to think about? Getting out of here, obviously! Idiots._ Kaito knew his sidekicks would be coming here to take down the cult and end this soon enough, but why just wait around for that when he could be escaping _himself_? And if his captors were being dumb enough to give him a free chance to do so, of course he was gonna take it.

He’d got his breath back about as much as he was ever going to, so he lifted his head and looked around the room, now that he had a moment to properly take everything in. It was a large, long room, with very little in it other than a toilet and sink at the far end, and a door – the only door – at the far corner. The floor and walls were mostly grey, bare concrete, except for some darker brown smudges along the floor in front of him that he didn’t really want to look at too closely. It also seemed like there was a speaker and a camera mounted to the ceiling in the corner behind him, but if those idiots thought something like that was going to discourage him from trying to escape, they had another think coming.

Well, the door was probably locked, but he’d deal with that problem when he got to it. The first issue – and the weirdest thing – was the setup with these stupid cuffs. They were oddly elaborate, not only locking around his wrists but with another section covering his hands so he couldn’t grab at anything, and the metal cable they were attached to wasn’t just fixed to a single point on the ceiling. Instead, it disappeared into a box high above him – probably containing the winch that gave it the adjustable length – and that box was mounted on a horizontal rail that ran from the back wall to halfway down the length of the room.

Experimentally, he tugged on the cable, not downwards, but forwards, and sure enough, the box slid along the rail just a little to accommodate it. Pretty smoothly, even. Kaito pulled himself somewhat jerkily to his feet and walked up and down the length of the rail, trailing the cable behind him. The box slid along with him every time the cable grew taut, giving barely any resistance.

What the hell was the point of this? To move him to different parts of the room or something? That’d be an uninviting thought if not for the fact that there was nothing else in here anyway.

Well, whatever. The only thing that mattered was getting _out_ of this thing. The back end of the rail looked pretty firmly cemented into the back wall, but the rest of it was held up by a metal frame that hugged the side walls, up until the point where the rail just stopped halfway down the room. Kaito pulled the box all the way to that point – obviously there was a plate blocking it from just sliding off the rail entirely, it couldn’t have been _that_ easy – but if any part of this whole thing was going to give, it had to be there, didn’t it?

He gave the cable a hard tug, but all that did was make the cuffs dig into his wrists, without the box budging. He dug his heels into the floor (he would have cursed his bare feet, but his usual slippers would hardly have been any better for this) and leaned backwards to put his whole weight into the pull, ignoring his body’s fervent protests. Still nothing. This approach didn’t seem too promising.

But then again, he could do more than just pull on it, couldn’t he? Whatever the hell the actual point of this rail was, it also left him room to build up some speed, so hey, what if he gave the end of the rail a nice big impact? Hell, he could give it as many as it needed, since those dumbasses had gone and left him with plenty of time to work on this!

So, starting at the back wall, the cable over his left shoulder – he’d have grabbed hold of it to make it effectively shorter if the cuffs weren’t blocking his hands – Kaito ran full-tilt down the room. The box slammed into the end of the rail with a satisfyingly resounding clang – and almost immediately he was yanked backwards with a yelp of shock, hitting the floor and being dragged across the concrete before he even knew what was happening. As quickly as he’d started, he came to a stop, lying in a heap on the ground near the back wall with his arms awkwardly suspended in the air.

_The hell just happened?_ Winded, Kaito picked himself up and saw that the cable’s box was also against the wall, like it had moved itself back there, dragging him with it.

Whatever freak occurrence that was, there… there was no way it’d happen again, right? Without letting himself think, Kaito fixed his sights on the far end of the room and rushed at it a second time, the cuffs over his right shoulder. Again, the clanging impact was followed by the whirring of a mechanism mixed in with Kaito’s yells and grunts of frustration as he was forcibly dragged back to where he’d started.

Okay, so… that had definitely happened on purpose, then. That box must have hidden more inside it than just a winch to adjust the cable length. But this hadn’t happened before, when he’d just been pulling on it. Just to be sure, he tested out walking the cable along to the end of the rail and simply tugging on it again – the box didn’t move. So… some kind of pressure pad that only triggered the box to move back when it was hit with enough force?

For science, ignoring the sinking feeling in his chest, Kaito stood at the back wall once more and charged forward with a battle cry, his arms straight above his head.

The resulting pull on the cuffs yanked him completely off his feet, and he flew backwards through the air several metres before slamming down into the ground with a piercing yell.

As he lay there staring up at the rail above him, battered and panting for breath – _damn_ , that had… that had been something – it dawned on Kaito what this whole setup was.

This was a torture device, designed to make escape look possible and then to punish any attempts to do so until he just gave up.

That was the reason for the rail, the box, the cuffs that blocked him from grabbing the cable to make it easier. That was why his captors had lengthened the cable before leaving him in here (geez, he should have wondered why they’d let him _sit down_ ) – so that he’d be dragged across the ground. That was why they’d left him here at all, not for _a chance to think_. They’d known he would try this. They wanted to teach him to _stop trying_.

Forcing himself to his feet more out of indignation at the very idea than anything else, Kaito glared out in front of him and found himself looking at the vague dark brown smudge along the ground. It… it was right underneath the rail, stretching ahead to just past the end of it. The reality of it hit him like a bucket of ice-cold water.

They hadn’t built this thing just for him, had they. That wouldn’t have made any sense.

…It had always seemed so _alien_ to Kaito, the way Maki Roll had just resigned herself to her awful situation for years on end, not even _trying_ to get herself free, not even realising she _wanted_ to, even though there really was a way out, as she and Shuichi were proving right now. It’d bothered Kaito so much that he’d looked into it, and he’d come across a phenomenon called ‘learned helplessness’ – such a ridiculous, backwards name, as if it could ever be in human nature to _learn_ that. Yet there it was; after everything the cult had done to her before he’d met her, Maki Roll had been living proof that it really did happen.

And now, here, as if the cult’s usual hellish training and emotional blackmail wasn’t enough to cause that, here was a whole _room_ they’d built for it. All so their child recruits could be _taught to give up_.

Kaito stared at the smudge on the floor, heaving with desperate, fuming breaths, shaking with an outrage unlike anything he’d ever felt. How many kids had been in this room, fervently trying to escape, to fight, to claw their way towards something better, until this thing had beaten them down into an utter certainty that it was just _impossible_ , no matter what they did? Had Maki Roll been one of them?

“You _bastards_! I’ll _show you_!”

With a passionate roar of fury, arms over his head, Kaito barrelled down the room and smashed the box into the plate as hard as he could, not even caring when he was wrenched off his feet, spitting out several loud curses as he crashed into the ground again.

Okay, so… so being dragged was definitely preferable to that. Not that he was going to let that _stop_ him, but as he picked himself up and rushed at it again, he kept his arms lower this time so he wouldn’t be pulled into the air. He was in this for the long haul, so he had to be smart about this.

Because he _would_ show those bastards. For all the kids they’d beaten into believing the impossible was just impossible, for all the kids whose _blood_ was on the ground in front of him, he would _show them_ it was possible after all. That stupid camera in the corner of the room – if they were watching this, then they’d _see_. He was _not_ gonna let them have their way, not any more. The kids had just been kids; no-one could have blamed them for not being able to do this. But he was Kaito Momota, he was a _hero_ , so he would _make it so_.

Over and over, as many times as it took, he would do this.

He tried turning and running the other way as soon as he made the impact, in an attempt to move backwards with the cable and not even get dragged at all. No luck – there was just no way he could reverse his momentum fast enough, and all that got him was being dragged along on his front instead. Not ideal. Not doing that again.

He took to letting himself be dragged on his side each time. Less surface area on his body to hit the floor; more seeing where he was going and not getting completely disoriented. When one side had had enough scrapes and bruises for the time being, he switched to the other side, alternating. But he didn’t _stop_. He didn’t even slow down. Heroes didn’t let _anything_ slow them down.

It didn’t matter how much the bumping and jolting along the floor was making his injuries from before flare up with a vengeance. It didn’t matter how badly his shoulders and wrists complained as they were wrenched way harder than they should have been, time and time again. It didn’t matter how his yells and curses of defiance grew louder and more piercing each time, nor how much more he had to keep panting for breath before picking himself up again.

Kaito was _going_ to do this. He had to.

But, damn it – despite how many times he’d been slamming the box into the end of the rail, despite how many new bruises and scrapes all over his body he was getting for his troubles after being dragged back again and again – the rail, the frame, the plate… _none of it was budging_.

He was giving it everything he had, refusing to falter for even a moment, and yet… how many kids had tried exactly this before? How many hundreds – _thousands_ – of impacts had they given this thing, only for it to still be standing as firmly as the day it was built? How many times had they been pulled backwards despite trying their hardest to run forwards, over and over, dragged away from everything they wanted, like a puppet on a string with no control over anything?

How much had they been _hurt_ by this? How freaking _helpless_ had it made them feel, like no matter how hard they tried, it would only ever end in more pain?

_Dammit, I’m supposed to be_ escaping _here!_ Those robed morons weren’t even here – there was _nothing_ stopping him! This was supposed to _work_ – he was supposed to finally have some _freedom_ and _control_ over things, to make things happen like he _wanted_ , and yet… and yet…

They’d known he would do this. They had a camera in the room. They were _watching_ him struggle and squirm uselessly in their trap.

_“Someone who_ thinks _he’s strong, nothing more.”_

Anger gripped Kaito, a different, more vicious kind of anger than before, seizing him in a way that had nothing to do with what’d been done to those kids. It was an anger that _hurt_ , just as much as it hurt each time his shoulders were wrenched backwards and he was dragged and scraped across the concrete like he was _nothing_. It took hold of every inch of him, barely even under his control – but then again he didn’t _want_ to control it, because anything was better than giving up and letting this pain get the better of him, than letting those bastards _win_.

Screaming with rage, he redoubled his efforts, refusing to be held back by the pain, by the promise of _more_ pain every time he did this, because there was no other option. There was nothing else, nothing but the all-consuming fury telling him to _break_ this thing, to break it _now_ , and he listened. He wanted nothing more than to do that, to _show them_ that someone like him wasn’t _helpless_. Someone like him didn’t _lose_.

This time, he’d break it. This time. This time! _This time!_

He wanted out. He wouldn’t stop; he couldn’t stand this. One way or another, he wanted _out_.

It couldn’t last forever. After far too long, somehow, eventually, the anger began to burn itself out. Even as it did, Kaito willed it not to leave him, to keep fuelling him, but each time, picking himself up and rushing at the frame grew harder and harder, and being jolted and scraped along the ground only made him more and more acutely aware of how much his body was hurting.

He didn’t know how much longer he could keep up like this, but the frame… it still hadn’t _broken_ , dammit. It was supposed to _break_. _He_ was supposed to break it. Wasn’t he?

Another huge clang, and another groan of pain as the whirring contraption above him wrenched him by his burning wrists and shoulders, dragging him mercilessly back along exactly the same path for the far-too-many’th time. Lying there, panting for breath, telling himself he should get up again, Kaito found for the first time that he just… didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be in any more pain than he already was.

Which immediately prompted him to haul his stupid protesting body up off the floor with a roar of frustration at himself. Like hell he was going to listen to a pathetically defeatist thought like _that_.

But as he stood, heaving for breath, he was swaying and dizzy, and _man_ there were so many smears of fresh blood – _his_ blood – across the ground, way more than he’d noticed until now. He ignored it and forced himself into a run, his legs shaking so much that it was more like just endless forwards stumbling than anything else.

Even as the clang of box against plate was quieter than usual, he couldn’t help but tense up in anticipation for what was coming. But… nothing happened.

Geez, he hadn’t even managed to run fast enough to trigger the mechanism. Like he was going to break _anything_ like that.

For a moment, he just stood there like a dumbass, leaning forwards, feebly trying to pull on the cable with just his weight again, as if that’d ever _help_. Then he dropped to his knees, the cable’s radius making him slide backwards until he was on his backside, sitting right beneath that stupid obstructing plate.

_Fine. Fine!_ He’d get some rest to get his strength back, then keep working on this again later. He had to have been getting somewhere – the frame, it had been beginning to give towards the end, just a little, hadn’t it? There was no way this had all been for nothing. No way.

Kaito slumped against the cuffs in exhaustion, shivering, his heart pounding in his ears and making all of his wounds throb painfully with every beat. He felt light-headed and dizzy – oh, hell, he was about to pass out, wasn’t he.

But… but _still_. He hadn’t _given up_ , dammit. He hadn’t _lost_.


	4. Chapter 3 – unimportant

“…ever seen anything like it, Master Takehira? You did say this kid was the type to torture himself, but man, that really was someth—”

“Quiet. He’s awake.”

The second voice was the leader’s, and Kaito realised with a start that, yeah, he _was_ awake, and already surrounded by boots and robed legs. He twisted around with tense, jerking movements that reawakened the pain, trying to gauge where the first attack would come from, scowling, _daring_ them to attack him.

And, wait, had the first guy just called Kaito a _kid_? What the hell? Geez, he was almost nineteen! More to the point, he was a _hero_ ; he thought he’d _established_ that by now.

They weren’t attacking him, not yet – instead, he heard a whirring above him, different to the kind that had been ringing in his head for too long. The cable winched upwards, pulling his arms with it, not nearly as wrenchingly fast as before, but enough to remind him just how badly he was still aching from that whole ordeal.

…In hindsight, playing into their hands and torturing himself like that had been… perhaps not the _most_ heroic of moves, had it. Even if it hadn’t taught him to give up (and it _hadn’t_ ; it wouldn’t, not ever), he’d still been making their job easier and doing their work for them. Of course they’d wanted him to do that, too. He should have seen that.

(But what the hell was he _supposed_ to have done? Just not even _tried_ in the first place? Bullshit.)

The cable came to a halt as he reached high-kneeling height again, and Kaito relaxed, just a little. If this was just going to be more of the same, that was fine. He’d handled it before; he could handle it again. It didn’t matter if he was more injured now. He _could_.

Except suddenly everything went dark as someone thrust a black cloth hood over his face from behind, tying the base loosely around his neck. “H-Huh?” he blurted out, hating the way that this alone was making his breathing quicken, louder in his ears than before. “Geez, you’re already wearing masks! Wh-What the hell’s the point of this!?”

He got no answer except for the vague sounds of shifting robes. Kaito squirmed his head against his raised arms, trying to work the hood off somehow, to no avail. There was nothing but blackness as he jerked his gaze around instinctively – maybe it _was_ just a little more unsettling, not being able to tell where the next attack would come from. But only a _little_.

The less-familiar whirring started up again, and Kaito was pulled up to his feet, then tiptoes, then higher still, and he couldn’t help but cry out in pain as suddenly his whole weight was hanging from his arms, his legs flailing at empty air beneath him. This _shouldn’t_ have been an issue, not normally – he had plenty of upper-body strength – but his arms were already screaming at him in protest after everything that had happened before. Geez, it felt like his shoulders had torn a muscle or two, his wrists were probably bleeding, and his ribs weren’t exactly thrilled with him either. Damn it, everything just _ached_ , and they hadn’t even started again yet.

On the bright side, at least he was pretty sure he hadn’t outright _dislocated_ anything during that whole mess. So he had _that_ going for him.

“Now then,” came the leader’s voice from somewhere vaguely in front of him, muffled somewhat through the hood over Kaito’s ears. “I don’t suppose your little tantrum back there gave you second thoughts about putting yourself through this?”

Kaito was breathing so hard from the strain already that it was harder to talk than it should’ve been, never mind the thick, stuffy air of the hood covering his face. But he didn’t let that stop him. “S-Screw you,” he spat, not caring that it’d sound even more muffled to them. “Whatever… you’re gonna do… this is basically… just like before. I didn’t tell you anything… then, so why should… this be any _different_ —”

Something slammed into his back to cut him off again, and not only did it hurt, it made him _swing_ from the cable, forcing a groan out of him as his shoulders’ protests grew even worse.

“No, I thought not.”

Another impact sent him swinging back the other way, and _twisting_ as he went, and he couldn’t see a damn thing. The beating kept going – that part was basically the same, never mind that it hurt even more now – but each hit also sent him lurching helplessly through empty air as he dangled from the cable, unable to steady himself with anything. He was blind, with no sense of where he was, no control at all.

Okay… Okay, maybe this _was_ kind of worse than last time. But, he wasn’t – he wasn’t going to let it get to him, not when he was a _hero_. He could _handle it_.

Forcing his pain and disorientation aside, Kaito pictured this as like a scene from an action movie. Using the swinging momentum to his advantage, taking out all his captors effortlessly with cool moves – that was the sort of thing a hero would do here. He gritted his teeth and gave it his best shot to copy what he was seeing in his head, but all he got in response was a swish of robes as his captors dodged out of the way, ‘cause he couldn’t even freaking _see_ them. Trying to control the swinging to give himself more momentum was hopeless; his shoulders were burning so much that it was all they could do to just hold on at all.

He kept at it anyway, refusing to just give it up so easily, but no matter what he was trying to imagine his attempts as looking like, the reality had to be nothing but aimless barefoot flailing they could see coming a mile away. Man, he must have looked so freaking ridiculous.

So, what, there was _nothing_ he could do, then? Nothing but just hang here – _geez_ , he was already so sick of being pulled everywhere by these _stupid cuffs_. He just had to _take it_ , swinging pathetically with each impact like some kind of literal punching bag. He couldn’t see them, and they couldn’t even see his _face_ ; it was like _he_ wasn’t even there. He was just an _object_ to them, something to beat, and hurt, and _break_. In a way, the pain wasn’t even really the biggest issue – and he knew this was the _point_ , and he definitely wasn’t letting this _get to him_ like they wanted it to, but the whole thing just felt so horribly _humiliating_.

That thought (that he shouldn’t have even been thinking at all) brought to mind something Maki Roll had once told him and Shuichi about her own torture at the cult’s hands. _“They tried to drag my dignity and tear it… To make me feel empty.”_ Had _this_ been something they’d put her through?

Kaito drew in a shaking breath of disgusted fury. Doing this to _him_ was one thing (and he could handle it, he _could_ ; he _knew_ he wasn’t as pathetic as they were trying to make him feel) – but Maki Roll had just been a _kid_! Who the hell had dared—

_Hold up. Didn’t that one guy call the leader ‘Takehira’?_

Kaito had heard that name before, once. When she’d agreed to let Shuichi investigate the cult, Maki Roll had told them as much as she’d known, including the name of the man who’d been her primary trainer and put her through most of the crap she’d had to suffer. It was just an alias, so it hadn’t been much help to Shuichi, but it was everything Kaito needed to know.

It was _this bastard_ right here.

Kaito’s blood boiled with incensed outrage – the passionate kind, the kind he could control. It gave him something to ground himself with, even as he swung helplessly through the air in pain. He was a _hero_ , and now here he was, confronted by the very villain responsible for putting his sidekick through hell.

There was no way he was gonna let that slide without doing something, _saying_ something. Sure, he couldn’t quite manage the badass fighting moves, but that didn’t mean there was _nothing_ he could do. He still had _words_. They’d blinded him, but they hadn’t gagged him – because they _couldn’t_ ; they were trying to make him talk.

_Yeah, I’ll talk all right, but not in the way these bastards want._

“I know – _ngh_ – who you are,” Kaito began in a low growl, turning his head as if that’d help, wishing he could _see_ where this Takehira guy was to face him down properly for this. “Yeah, you, the – _drgh_ – dumbass with the _fghh!_ – the fanciest mask!”

…Maybe this wasn’t coming out quite as impressive as he’d imagined it, given how he couldn’t stop himself grunting in pain every few words and panting for breath at the end of each sentence. And having it come from someone who was dangling and swinging from his arms with a stupid hood covering his face might have also dampened the effect a little. But only a little! He was _doing this_ , no matter what. They couldn’t stop him from _talking_.

“T-Takehira, _nghhy_ yeah? You’re the _wrr_ – the one who trained _mghh_ – Maki Roll, right? You even did stuff like _gragh_ – _this!_ – to her, didn’t you _uugh_!?” He took a short break to breathe a bit more – harsh, angry breaths through gritted teeth. Just imagining this bastard putting Maki Roll, a _child_ Maki Roll, through the same pain that he was in right now made Kaito so furious, and that was _good_. He could focus on that, draw strength from that.

…Takehira hadn’t responded to him yet. He was – he was probably just taken aback by the realisation that Kaito knew, that was all.

“Yeah, t-too bad she’s _sghhh_ – fighting back now, huh? That’s cuz she’s _aggh_ – she’s _amazing_.” Thinking of how far Maki Roll had come and how fiercely proud he was of her was an equally powerful feeling to hold onto – maybe even _more_ so. “She’s my side _kah!_ – _sidekick_ , after all. You tried to bree _eak!_ – her and make her your – _ngggh –_ puppet, but you _failed_. She’s jus _ssssh_ —” this hiss of pain came through a grin (not that they could see that, dammit) – “she’s just too _strong_ for you. How does tha _aaght!_ – feel? Huh!?”

He gave himself another rest to let Takehira react, but – nothing. Kaito was really hoping to have got _something_ out of him by now.

“A-And, you know what _aghhh_ else!?” he went on. “You know who _ghh_ , got her to break free of ev _rrrh_ – what you did to her? It was _mrragh_ – _me!_ ” Kaito’s legs flailed aimlessly in the air, and he probably wasn’t even facing the right direction, but damn it, it didn’t _matter_. “Yeah, I _tggh_ – turned her life around, let her _rrrgghr_ ealise what assholes you are. So – so it’s _sshhh_ all _my_ fault that all your – _drghh!_ – I ruined all your hard work.”

Something felt off about this as he was saying it – he’d only given Maki Roll a nudge, hadn’t he? The rest had all been _her_. But he couldn’t go back on himself now; that wouldn’t sound impressive at all.

“How ‘bout that!?” he prompted. “You got _nguhh_ – nothing to say to me, the _heghhh_ – _hero_ who saved her from you?”

…It seemed like Takehira still really did have nothing to say to him. Damn it, Kaito couldn’t even _see_ him; the guy might as well have not even been in the room at all.

“And _dgh_ , hey, remember how you’re so _sghh_ – scared of Shuichi ending you guys that _yagh!_ – you tried to get Maki Roll to _khh_ – _kill_ him a few days ago?” His voice was growing more strained and high-pitched despite his efforts, which wasn’t doing him any great favours in the sounding-heroic department either, but he refused to be discouraged. “Guess who _strgh_ – stopped that? Yeah, that was _aghh_ also me, because a hero never – _djaagh_ – a hero – _dyahh!_ – I _protect my sidekicks_ , dammit! Your little plan would have gone _grah!_ – worked if it wasn’t for _me!_ ”

 _What the hell am I saying?_ _Why am I making it sound like Maki Roll would’ve_ actually killed Shuichi _if I hadn’t got there in time?_

…He didn’t mean it, not really. He’d just said it to freak Takehira out, to make him think he was messing with the one who’d thrown a wrench in all his plans, the hero who’d never let his sidekicks get hurt. (But, then…)

 _Still_ silence, damn it. Well, no – there was no end to the creaking of the cable and the thuds and smacks of weapons against his body, and his own ragged breathing and bitten-off cries of pain. But no _words_.

“You _still_ got _ngah!_ – n-nothing to say to me? C-C’mon, man, say – _gyah!_ – say _something_!”

“Where are Harukawa and Saihara hiding?”

“H-Huh?”

Takehira was still in the room, frustratingly somewhere _behind_ him right now, and with his arms held so rigidly, Kaito couldn’t even turn his head properly to face him. Not that it would have meant much if he _could_ , apparently.

 _That’s it?_ _That’s_ all _he’s got to say – nothing_? Kaito panted for breath, trying to keep the fire inside him, but it was draining away even faster than before. “Everything I _jhh_ – just said, and you j – you jus – _Gaaah!_ ” He took a few more breaths of stuffy air, willing himself to stay on track, to not let it just _stop_ here. “D-Don’t just _ignore_ me!” _Damn it, why do I sound so_ desperate _?_

“Where are your associates?”

Kaito gave a loud grunt of frustration and wrenched his head around to behind his arms so he wasn’t facing completely the wrong freaking way, not even caring how it tormented his stupid shoulders even more, nor how Takehira couldn’t even see his _face_ anyway. “Look, man, even if I _dghh_ did tell you – which I _won’t_ , _ghh_ – we both know you’re just gonna _kagh_ , _kill_ me once I do. Not just betr _ayygh-_ ing my sidekicks, but also _dahh_ – _dying_? It’s _doubly_ impossible to make me _aaghh!_ – ever wanna do that! I haven’t even gone to sp _aahhh_ – _space_ yet!”

There was a pause, and the beating… the beating actually stopped.

“What makes you think we’d need to take your life?” Takehira asked, like he was finally interested enough to let Kaito talk freely.

“Wh-What?” breathed Kaito, gasping in relief from the respite. The swinging slowed, and he twisted back around to – well, hopefully the right direction, at least.

He really wished he could just take the moment to rest and catch his breath, but he couldn’t afford to; he was on the offensive here at last. Kinda. Probably? “Y’know, b-because. Cuz I know stuff, right? About your bullshit cult, and… and all the hell you put those kids through. Even if Shuichi and Maki Roll got—” He halted, backing up a second, refusing to finish that thought. “Even if it was just me, I could still mess you up real bad if you let me go.”

 _What… what the hell am I doing? Am I_ trying _to get them to kill me? What if they just…_ do _?_

Kaito let out a sudden wailing yell as the henchmen began laying into him again, the pain even worse after the brief reprieve. “No,” Takehira said. “You couldn’t.” More blows kept coming, punctuating his speech; Takehira timed his words carefully in between Kaito’s cries of pain to make sure he was heard. “Everything you know is just hearsay, circumstantial, not concrete evidence. You haven’t seen our faces, or where you are right now.”

A heavy blow to Kaito’s side sent him swinging wildly one way. “Saihara’s detective skills are a danger to us.” A dizzying impact on his other side shunted him back the other way. “Harukawa’s skills turned against us are a danger, too.” Takehira paused. “But you?” Three vicious blows hit Kaito in his chest and back in quick succession. “You’re not important. If you tell us where to find the two who matter to us, we will let you walk free.”

Kaito’s head was spinning, more than it should have been, and more than just literally as the beating still didn’t let up on him. That… Takehira was bluffing, right? To make the option of giving in seem more inviting? ( _Hah_. As if there could ever be _anything_ remotely _inviting_ about what’d happen to his sidekicks if he did that, never mind what happened to him after.)

But still, those… those words weren’t true. Kaito had no reason to believe such blatant lies.

He tried to think of something more to say, to keep up his verbal assault, but the momentum he’d had before had vanished into the ether. The disorienting swinging and constant spikes of pain were so much that he couldn’t quite focus enough to get hold of something, find another starting point to work from.

_“You’re not important.”_

Why…? Why was _that_ sticking with him, of all things? It wasn’t _true_.

Anyway, what… what was the thought he’d been holding onto before, to help himself talk? How proud he was of Maki Roll, that was it – and he was equally proud of Shuichi, for that matter. Yeah, they’d been nothing but amazing while the three of them had been on the run from the cult: Shuichi pursuing the investigation, Maki Roll using her knowledge of the cult’s methods to keep them safe from assassins while he did so. They made the best team.

And Kaito… all he’d really had to offer them had been some optimistic words and a smile. A smile that hadn’t even been _real_ , not with how gut-wrenchingly worried he’d been about them, about this whole situation, beneath it all. If they’d known that, how much would it have even been able to help them?

 _That_ hardly worked as something he could make an impressive speech about, did it. Or even as a remotely helpful distraction from all this _pain_ that he shouldn’t – shouldn’t be letting get to him this much.

 _Damn_ these noises that kept escaping him! He’d been trying to tune them out, but there was only so much he could ignore the sounds leaving his own _mouth_ at every impact, especially with the hood smothering his face. They’d started off merely as grunts, except he was all too aware that they’d gradually begun to sound more like _screams_. And not even screams of defiance – just of wretched, miserable pain.

He hated it. He hated that he couldn’t stop himself from sounding like this. He wasn’t _supposed_ to scream; he wasn’t supposed to _need_ to, like he was _freaking out_ over this or something, because that wasn’t what he was doing. He couldn’t afford to let that happen. It shouldn’t even be a thing that _he did_ at all.

 _“Someone who_ thinks _he’s strong.”_

Damn it, why _those_ words, too? They were just as obviously wrong. Kaito _was_ strong; he was a _hero_. His sidekicks _needed_ him to be one.

With a hiss of frustration at himself, Kaito gritted his teeth and fought to suppress the stupid, unheroic screams-that-weren’t-really-screams that this pain was getting out of him, forcing them down until they were just grunts and groans again. But it was so _hard_ to even do that, and it shouldn’t have been.

He needed something to focus on, but there was _nothing_ , nothing to be doing with himself except just dangling here, swinging, and grunting, and _hurting_. He couldn’t even _look_ at anything – this freaking hood was trapping him in his own head, which was the _last_ place he needed to be right now.

In a fervid effort to _make_ something to look at in the blackness, to have something other than _himself_ to think about, Kaito began to forcibly picture the night sky against the dark cloth, like his own mini-planetarium. Amongst the constant, unrelenting pain, he fought to stay focused on just remembering all of the constellations he knew so well, and nothing else. _Ursa Minor. Draco. Ursa – Ursa Major._

One by one, star by star, Kaito tried to imagine he was anywhere but here.


	5. Chapter 4 – losing

He didn’t even want to think about how long that beating had gone on for. (Too long.) It was over now; that was all that mattered.

They’d lowered him enough to be on his feet again, but not enough to sit down, or even kneel, so Kaito was leaning against the back wall, trying to spread his weight between his arms, back and legs as he took big, heavy breaths. Not exactly the most comfortable position to rest in, but it was the best he had.

He still felt faintly like he was swinging, even though his body had been still for a while now. The sensation would fade in time, but it was annoying.

(The pain, on the other hand, didn’t feel like it would ever be leaving him alone.)

The hood over his head was gone, too. He knew perfectly well why they’d let him see again – and stand on his feet, for that matter. They were giving him free rein with this stupid contraption he hadn’t managed to escape from before, basking in their arrogance that even if he tried again, he’d still fail.

Screw them. He’d show them. Just… in a bit. He needed a break first.

It hadn’t been a fun prospect to gaze at the trail of faded blood along the floor and watch his own dry on top of it, so Kaito was staring up at the ceiling. The stars were up there beyond it, somewhere. Maybe he’d been wrong about it being night-time before – maybe _now_ it was.

Maki Roll and Shuichi were probably doing their training without him, then. That wasn’t a problem – they’d done it without him a bunch of times over their years at Hope’s Peak, when he hadn’t been able to make it for one reason or another. They’d be fine on their own.

Kaito swallowed and licked his lips, wishing his throat wasn’t so damn dry. He’d been right about those assholes having no plans to give him anything to eat or drink. His stomach was probably growling by now as well, but it was kind of hard to tell beneath how much everything just _hurt_.

_Damn_ this pain – it was bad enough, jostling its way into every part of his consciousness, that he couldn’t quite block it out and ignore it no matter how hard he tried, and he hated it. Sure, obviously pain was kind of the _point_ of torture; he wasn’t stupid enough to have not been expecting that. But that didn’t mean he had to be letting it… _hurt him_. He couldn’t _afford_ that, not when his sidekicks’ lives were on the line.

He was meant to be their hero, so he couldn’t let them down. He couldn’t—

With a roar of frustration, Kaito snapped himself out of that nonsense, pushing his body off the back wall and standing up straight. This stupid contraption had waited long enough. Yelling ferociously, he charged down the length of the rail – and hey, the cable was shorter now, so he wouldn’t even be dragged along the ground this time! _Idiots._

But instead, the moment he hit the end with a resounding clang, his momentum pulled him off his feet and _swung_ him forwards, legs flailing, only for that awful whirring to start a second later, wrenching his arms and shoulders back. Kaito felt himself just seize up, mind and body, as he lurched through the air, helpless (was that _him_ screaming?)

Then a smaller clang, and every part of him freaking _slammed_ into the back wall with a bone-shaking crunch that set his whole body alight with pain… and, yeah, this scream was definitely his.

Groaning, Kaito staggered forwards on legs like jelly, sagging against the cable despite the searing pain in his shoulders, his breathing coming sharp and fast, too fast. Whatever fire had filled him and made him do that to himself had vanished in an instant.

_Damn it, why the hell am I shaking so much? It’s not like the room’s_ that _cold._

“L-Later!” he forced himself to yell between shallow breaths, knowing exactly what those assholes watching him through the camera must have been thinking. “I-I’ll – get back to it – later!”

He just… he just had to rest a bit more, that was all. Just a little.

The first thing to do was slow his breathing back down to a sensible rate, a task that took way longer than it should have done. Then he made his legs co-operate just long enough to lean him against the wall again, ignoring the stinging pain in his back.

_Man_ , he was tired as hell. Maybe… maybe just turn that rest into a quick nap, then he’d keep trying again after. He closed his eyes and let his head droop, willing everything to just shut off for a while.

Despite how utterly exhausted he was, though, it was hard to actually get anywhere close to sleep at all. If he let his body relax entirely, his legs would buckle and he’d end up with all his weight on his arms. _That_ wouldn’t exactly help. But even trying to somehow sleep while half-standing up, the pain was still there, constantly, gnawing away at him and refusing to leave him the hell alone.

His mouth was so damn dry, too. Even just a sip of water would have meant the world right now.

…Was he seriously going to get back to escaping this thing once he woke up? Even though all it amounted to was torturing himself more and making this pain even worse?

_What, so I’m just gonna_ give up _, then? What the hell would that say about me?_

He didn’t want to _lose_ to these assholes. He wasn’t _supposed_ to lose. He was meant to be someone who never backed down from any challenge at all.

Hadn’t he been going to get himself out of here and show them he could make it possible after all? Yet here he was, not just failing, but not even having the strength to _try_ in the first place.

And all just because it _hurt_ a bit. _Geez, that’s pathetic, isn’t it?_

Damn it, he was _thinking_ too much. These stupid thoughts needed to just leave him alone and let him sleep.

His stomach could do with shutting up, as well – somehow it had managed to make its emptiness felt after all, even through all the pain.

At least… no matter whether or not Kaito managed to escape on his own, Shuichi was bound to be getting closer and closer to done with his investigation. He and Maki Roll would be here to end this soon enough. Kaito believed in his sidekicks, more than anything. They were gonna take down this whole ridiculous cult.

_(“But you? You’re not important.”)_

So – so it didn’t matter how much worse things got on Kaito’s end here. He wouldn’t have to hold on forever, just for a few more days, until his sidekicks got here. So even if…

…What the hell was he thinking? He needed to _stop thinking_. He just wanted to _sleep_. That was all. Just sleep.

He wished the pain would go away.

_Why… why am I even thinking like that?_ The pain shouldn’t even have been _bothering him_ in the first place. He couldn’t let himself be like this; if this kept up, then…

He was a _hero_ , wasn’t he? He… he _needed_ to be a hero, for his sidekicks’ sake, now more than ever, but…

Despite his attempt to sleep, Kaito opened his eyes for just a moment to look down at the red kabuki pattern he was wearing – but his t-shirt was so torn and dirty and bloodstained by now that the hero’s face was barely recognisable. He closed his eyes again bitterly.

He hadn’t stopped _shaking_ , either.

Damn it. This wasn’t good enough. He had to be stronger than this. He just _had_ to be; the alternative was unacceptable.

If… if he could just get some freaking _sleep_ already, then when he woke up, he’d have his strength back, refreshed, ready to do this over from the top. Everything’d be fine.

_(“Someone who_ thinks _he’s strong, nothing more.”)_

Sagging against the wall, hanging his head, it was still a long, long time before Kaito could get himself to stop thinking about anything at all.

Everything hurt so damn much.


	6. Chapter 5 – deluded

It barely even counted as ‘sleep’. It was more like just occasional periods of drifting off and mercifully not having any memory of his recent thoughts for a short while, in between the constant, unrelenting _ache_ all over. So when Kaito heard the door open and his captors enter the room, snapping him back into something vaguely resembling alertness, he didn’t feel at all refreshed or ready for anything.

_So much for getting back to escaping ‘later’, huh?_

Takehira and his henchmen surrounded him as usual – and then the first thing they did was unlock the cuffs, letting Kaito finally collapse to his knees and hate the way he felt _grateful_ about it. His wrists stung in the cold air, raw and messy enough that he didn’t want to look at them. The same pretty much went for all of him at this point.

As Kaito was about to wonder why they were doing this, a boot jabbed into his stomach like a piston and he was doubled over on the floor. More kicks joined in, pain lancing through him over and over before he could tense anything to try and absorb them, and oh great, they were doing this again. He couldn’t help but curl up on instinct, shuddering at every impact, trying and failing to bite down the noises he was making at each one.

Once again, Takehira wasn’t even joining in, just standing back and watching. Kaito must have looked so pathetic to him.

In amongst the savage pain, Kaito felt hands around his legs and feet. Feebly, he tried to kick them away – as if that’d have done anything when he was barefoot – but they just held on tighter and started winding a rope around his ankles, too tight for comfort.

The _only_ reason they were kicking him like this was to stop him fighting back while they restrained him a different way. Geez, couldn’t they have just _asked_?

_…Would I have just_ let them _if they had?_

More hands seized Kaito’s arms from where they were cradling his head, a twisting pain in his shoulders heralding them being wrenched behind his back. He redoubled his struggling, refusing to be deterred by the continued slew of kicks to his tender stomach and fractured ribs, refusing to just _give in_ to them – until Takehira stepped forwards, with cruel deliberation, and casually trod on the side of Kaito’s _face_.

Kaito tensed up, his breathing fast and shallow, cringing as the heavy boot treads pressed his cheek into the concrete floor. The kicks stopped coming, like they weren’t needed any more, and… apparently they weren’t. He was just _letting_ them tie his arms behind his back now. Cursing himself for stopping, Kaito renewed his struggles, only for Takehira’s boot to crush down on his face harder, still with only a fraction of his body weight. With a choked gasp, Kaito froze again, paralysed, helpless.

He knew the threat was empty – they needed him alive – but, he just… _couldn’t_ , not against such a visceral sense of how horribly fragile his life was beneath their feet. He hated it so much. He wasn’t supposed to be this _small_.

Kaito tried to at least glare up at Takehira, just to show _any_ kind of defiance at all, but his face was pressed so far into the ground that he couldn’t even see the man’s mask from here.

“C-Coward…!” he choked out, as loudly as he could muster. He knew that was the truth, he _knew_ , but… it didn’t _feel_ that way around right now.

Takehira only lifted his boot up, letting Kaito breathe easier again, when the restraints were finished. Kaito’s arms had been crossed behind his back, forearms tightly lashed together, with more rope around both his upper arms at once to lock them in place, well and truly immobile. His ankles were just as firmly bound. He made an effort to struggle against his new bonds, more just for the sake of having _tried_ than anything else, but all it did was make the ropes dig into his skin, not budging at all.

They… they’d only gone so far as to restrain him this securely because they were afraid he’d escape if they didn’t. That made sense, right? That _would’ve_ made sense, usually, but…

One of the henchmen grabbed Kaito by what felt like some kind of makeshift handle where his arms were bound and began hauling him across the room, dragging him through the dried-up smears of his own and so many other kids’ blood, probably adding some fresh ones on top in the process. The trip was rough, jolting, giving all of his injuries the chance to flare up again and remind him they were still here, still hurting, still never leaving him alone. His captors kept dragging him, past the blood, all the way towards the sink at the far wall, where they wrenched his torso up into a kneeling position and propped his chest against it.

A pale, harrowed face looked back at Kaito through the grimy mirror opposite. Dried and fresh blood trailed through stubble in various directions, a raw boot-print distinct across one cheek. One eye was all but hidden behind a matted mop of hair; the other was glazed, staring out in disbelief.

_Is that… is that really me…?_

He didn’t look anything like a hero – not even in a grizzled, battle-worn kind of way like he’d been wishfully picturing. He just looked like a mess.

Beneath him, the sink was full to the brim with water. Kaito had just a brief moment of creeping realisation over what this meant before a rough hand grabbed the back of his head and shoved his face into it.

Bubbles escaped his mouth as he gasped outwards in shock. The water was cold against his skin, running up his nose, stinging his eyes. He was smothered by it, all too uncomfortably aware that if he so much as breathed in, it’d be in his lungs, too. Instinctively, he tried to lift his head out of the water, but the hand just forced him down further. More hands were grabbing at his shoulders and bound arms, holding him fast.

Okay, so… so now they were waterboarding him. At least, if nothing else, this’d make a nice break from all the _pain_.

In fact, this was fine. This was absolutely something Kaito could handle, wasn’t it? All he had to do was deal with a lack of oxygen, which was just like something right out of his astronaut training!

…His astronaut training that he hadn’t even officially _begun_ yet – he would have done as soon as he graduated Hope’s Peak, but he’d put it on hold until Maki Roll was safe from the cult. Still, Kaito had done plenty of _preparation_ for the kinds of things that’d be in his actual astronaut training, so it was basically the same idea. He’d always been able to hold his breath for ages. This’d be no problem… right?

Yet, after what must have been barely half a minute, Kaito could already feel himself struggling, fighting the urge to breathe in. He should have known – being exhausted and injured all over would make this so much harder, never mind how good he was at it. If they’d done this earlier, when he still had all his strength, it’d have been so easy for him, but… but…

And maybe even worse was the way he had no _control_ over it at all. When he’d practiced this kind of thing in a pool, he always knew he could just surface and breathe again whenever he needed to, so it was just a challenge to himself and nothing more. But here and now, no matter how much he _wanted_ to quit the challenge, no matter how badly his lungs writhed and begged for relief, how fervently he struggled to pull his face out of the water so he could breathe _air_ and not smothering deadly water, he was being held under with an unrelenting force that he just couldn’t breach. His life was in their hands, completely and utterly, and it was excruciating.

After far, far too long, the hand holding him down seized a fistful of his hair and yanked his head painfully backwards out of the sink. Droplets flew everywhere, and Kaito could finally breathe again, rivulets of water running down his face that he rapidly blinked away. His reflection stared back at him, his mouth wide and gasping, his soaked fringe plastered to his face, his eyes…

Kaito shifted his gaze up to Takehira, who was standing impassively behind him. It was _his_ hand in Kaito’s hair; he’d been the one holding Kaito under. “Where are Harukawa and Saihara?”

Kaito tried to shake his head defiantly, but he could barely even _move_ it when Takehira was still gripping his hair, too tight. Then the grip shifted back to an open palm, and despite Kaito’s efforts to prevent it, he was forced inexorably back underwater again.

It occurred to Kaito, as he was submerged for the second time: this was _water_. They were giving him something to _drink_ at last, the morons. It probably wasn’t all that healthy, sure, but now really wasn’t the time to be picky. Carefully, making sure it didn’t go down the wrong way, Kaito swallowed some of the water – and regretted it immediately when it burned his throat like hell. He choked, trying to gag it back up without actually _breathing_ , trying to make the burning _stop_ somehow.

Damn it, they’d _thought_ of that. They must have put something in it to make it practically undrinkable. He wasn’t about to do _that_ again in a hurry. Especially not when his choking and struggling had just made it _harder_ now to keep his breath held, to fight the urge to breathe in, knowing that it’d only draw in _more_ of that awful acrid water and kill him even more painfully than this tight suffocating feeling was _already doing_ —

“Where are your associates?” Takehira asked again once he finally, _finally_ pulled Kaito out of the water and allowed him to breathe.

Kaito just tried to stare at him hatefully, to scowl as best he could through heaving breaths, until he was plunged under for the third time.

_How many times is it gonna be before I lose count?_

Because he was _going_ to lose count at some point, he realised – there was no way this wasn’t going to just keep going on and on and on, like everything else they’d done to him.

That thought pulled at him, as if it was dragging him down into even further watery depths, and all at once Kaito _fought_. Not just with his head, but with his whole body, pulling against the ropes that cut into his arms and legs, thrashing his chest against the sink’s edge with no care to the crushing pain in his ribs, just trying to get _out_ of this somehow.

Nothing happened. Takehira remained as ruthless as ever in holding him under, while the too many other hands grasping his shoulders and arms had him pinned in an iron grip that refused to yield even a little against his struggles. He would have grabbed at them, kicked at them, but his arms and feet were bound too tightly. There was nothing he could do, nothing, _nothing_.

Even trying at all had used up more oxygen, increasing the suffocating pressure in his face and chest, making it even harder that it needed to be to hold on and keep the water out of his lungs for just a little more, _just a little more_ , as far as he thought he could possibly ever hold it and then even further still, before he was finally wrenched back out of the water and allowed to breathe.

“Where are they?” asked Takehira again, for the third time in a row. Gasping for breath, water streaming down his face, Kaito stared up at the masked man – he was going to keep asking each time, wasn’t he. There almost seemed to be an infuriating confidence to that blue-patterned fake face, like he expected this to succeed in getting him an answer any minute now. Screw him.

The fourth time under, Kaito forced himself to completely suppress the urge to struggle, even with his head, knowing it’d just make things worse. He needed to hold on no matter what – _anything_ that made doing so even a tiny bit easier had to be done. But he hated it so much, having to just _submit_ to this cloying, sinking feeling of utter, utter helplessness. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t _him_.

This took so _long_ , too, before it got to the worst part – endless seconds of just _waiting_ for it to grow near-unbearable like he knew it would before he’d be allowed to breathe again. And now that he wasn’t distracting himself by trying to fight back, there was nothing to do in this time but _think_. Except that Kaito didn’t want to think about anything that was happening right now, not even a little. He especially didn’t want to think about how much _time_ he was going to have to spend down here, firmly thinking about absolutely nothing at all.

Eventually, the pressure increased and the air trapped in his lungs grew thinner and thinner, too thin. And even though he was _trying_ to _not_ fight back, no amount of wilful submission could suppress the primal writhing and thrashing that took hold of him as his body just desperately fought to _live_.

After all that, upon hearing Takehira’s voice ask him “Where are they?” for the fourth time, Kaito suddenly wanted nothing more than to somehow make that smug unmarred villain face _shut up_.

With that thought, some mad spark of stubborn, ridiculous rebellion surfaced within him, and he found himself snapping out, “They’re in _space_ , dammit!”

That made Takehira’s mask tilt, just slightly, and Kaito could feel the hand in his hair take just a little extra moment longer than usual before forcing him back under. There was something very satisfying in that.

He took that tiny nugget of satisfaction, turned it over and over in his head and held onto it for as long as he could during the early, easier stretch of submerged waiting. It was _something_. It was something _he’d_ made.

It was something that dissolved away along with the oxygen he was holding in his lungs as the seconds ticked onwards. Everything became nothing but overwhelming suffocation and primal insuppressible struggling and the fight to hold on for even just a little bit longer, _don’t breathe don’t breathe don’t breathe_ —

So when Kaito was pulled up and gasping for air again, he wanted it back.

“Where are they?”

“They’re on the _moon_!”

Takehira’s mask didn’t shift even a little this time, and he shoved Kaito’s head back underwater without missing a beat.

Kaito didn’t even care. It crossed his mind that this whole thing was pointless and ridiculous and really not achieving anything at all, but he refused to let himself worry about minor details like that. He was _doing this anyway_ , dammit. He _had_ something at last.

The next time Kaito had been to the brink of drowning and back, his sidekicks were on Mercury. He was in this for the long haul, too.

As they reached Venus, it occurred to Kaito that having his eyes open while his face was above water to look at Takehira and his henchmen and other things in the mirror was just distracting him from focusing on this properly. So he closed them, and resolved to keep them that way from now on. Besides, this way he didn’t have to keep blinking water out of his eyes every time he surfaced.

He skipped Earth. His sidekicks definitely weren’t _there_.

After Mars, his other captors apparently realised that, yes, he was dead serious about this. They began to throw in kicks at Kaito here and there while he was underwater, reawakening the pain, reminding him just how much everything hurt. The worst ones were the ones that hit him in the torso, knocking the breath out of him and making it even more difficult to hold on – but with his chest pressed against the sink and his arms tied behind his back, it wasn’t the easiest target for them to hit. For once.

Still, maybe… maybe being facetious and pissing them off like this hadn’t _entirely_ been the best of moves. But he’d be damned if he was going to back out of this now that he’d started. Kaito didn’t back down from challenges; he _didn’t_. He was going to _show them_ , at last.

Through Jupiter and Saturn, Kaito began to curse the hand that never left the back of his head, hating the way Takehira would always grab his hair and wrench his neck back too painfully far each time a dunking was over, never just letting him lift his head for himself. (He’d _told_ Maki Roll that ditching the hairstyle would surely have a downside somehow – he hadn’t expected it to be _this_.) He wasn’t being afforded a single inch of control, not even allowed to move his _head_ how he wanted, not even allowed to _breathe_ when he wanted.

But when he _could_ breathe, they still couldn’t stop him from _saying_ whatever he wanted. Nothing could stop him from doing this, nothing except the limits of his knowledge of space, and like hell _that_ was ever going to fail him. _Those bastards think I’m gonna run out once I reach the edge of the solar system? Ha! Joke’s on them!_

So Kaito fought his way through to Uranus and Neptune, added Pluto on the end for old times’ sake – sure, he got why it was demoted, but that didn’t stop him being sad about it! – and then savoured the subtle, bewildered shift in the henchmen’s grip on him as he did Phobos. Then (an eternity of underwater thrashing later), Deimos.

(Takehira still didn’t hesitate to shove him back under each time, but whatever, screw him.)

After all, if he could do the Earth’s moon, he could also do all the moons of every other planet in the solar system, right? …Well, okay, not quite _all_ of them, because there were so many that even _he_ didn’t have every single one’s name memorised, not to mention that not all of them even _had_ proper names yet – but he could name a bunch of the most well-known ones, easy. That’d last him a good long while, before he even got further out into space. Kaito wasn’t stopping this _any_ time soon.

(Just like _they_ weren’t.)

The henchmen hadn’t stopped kicking him while he was under. He wished they would. Sometimes he couldn’t help but breathe in just a tiny bit of water in response – not enough to drown from, but enough to make his lungs burn and itch with the constant urge to cough it up even several moons later, except he didn’t have _time_ to do so properly in the scant few seconds he could actually breathe for.

But it was fine; it wasn’t _getting to him_. He had more important things to focus on. He spent the first periods underwater during which it was easy enough to think clearly remembering the next moon and recalling as many facts as he knew about it. Not that he exactly had time to recount all _that_ stuff to his captors while he could speak, but there was never any harm in strengthening his knowledge of the universe.

And when things grew so tight and suffocating that he could barely think at all past the primal struggle to keep holding on for just a few more seconds at a time, he could at least remember the moon’s name if nothing else. He’d repeat it in his head again and again and again until he was finally allowed to surface, so that he’d be ready with it straight away.

This became a battle of wills, with Kaito using his stubbornly never-ending knowledge of space to force _them_ to relent and give in. He was going to make Takehira and his henchmen lose their patience and realise he would never run out of space knowledge, no matter how long things went on for, because this _wasn’t getting to him at all_ , not one bit, and so _they_ might as well be the ones to call a stop to it first.

Kaito was going to _win_ for once. He _was_ , dammit – _this time_.

And not only that – perhaps this could also be a way for him to _escape_. He could pretend, just a little, that he was up there on those moons himself, out among the stars. Anywhere but _here_ , helplessly almost-drowning over and over again in a grimy sink in this hellhole.

Or at least, if nothing else, even if Kaito really was stuck down here, it let him imagine that _his sidekicks_ were up there in space. They were safe, and far the hell away from these sick bastards who wanted them dead. _That_ was worth it, whether Kaito was out there with them or not.

After making it all the way back out to Charon, Pluto’s biggest moon – _well, more like a smaller twin dwarf planet, gravitationally locked to Pluto, meaning they both keep the same faces towards each other as they orbit. So Charon’s always in exactly the same spot in Pluto’s sky, and Pluto in Charon’s! Isn’t that cool, you guys!?_ – it was finally time to leave the solar system and move further out into space.

Except, as Kaito was sizing up Proxima Centauri b to take his sidekicks to visit next, it occurred to him that this was basically the only exoplanet with a properly unique name. The rest came in groups of the same name, just with different numbers and letters after them for each individual one. That’d just make Takehira think he was cheating and making up random numbers and letters to pad things out. He _wouldn’t_ be, but it was the principle of the thing – these masked morons needed to _know_ that Kaito was _winning_.

So after taking Shuichi and Maki Roll on an extremely quick whirlwind tour of Proxima Centauri b (the storms and flooding were pretty bad there this time of year, it turned out), Kaito thought even bigger, and took them even farther beyond.

“They’re in the Andromeda Galaxy!” felt _good_ , it felt so good to imagine his sidekicks being somewhere so far away where these bastards couldn’t ever hurt them.

But then it dawned on Kaito, over the next few (still rather too uncomfortably wet) galaxy trips, that actually most of _them_ were just numbers and letters, too. There were only a handful with actual proper names – and it was a lot harder to remember interesting facts about entire _galaxies_ that were so, so distant.

(Space was a harsh place. Oxygen was so very limited, and there could be asteroid impacts from time to time, and maybe sometimes there were hand-like alien creatures that grabbed onto your body, onto the back of your _head_ , and _never freaking let go_. But all of that was _fine_. It was _worth it_. He was Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars – he _was_ ; he knew space better than _anyone_ – so… so he could _handle it_.)

So once he’d exhausted all the galaxies he knew, Kaito had no choice but to bring Maki Roll and Shuichi closer to home again, to take them around the lesser-known moons of the solar system that he’d skipped the first time. Which was fine; he still knew _so many more_ of them. This wasn’t going to _stop_ him.

He started with Pluto’s other four moons, partly because with only four more they were easy to remember, but mostly because then his sidekicks were still as far away as possible. So far out… yet still so much closer than they’d been just a little while ago. But – but that didn’t matter. He still had this.

Kerberos. Styx. Nix. Hydra. They were all tiny and obscure enough that he didn’t really know many specific facts about these moons, so this abruptly became less of a space tour and more of a Greek mythology lesson, but _whatever_. That’d _do_.

To keep on the Greek theme, he decided to go back to Saturn next, ‘cause that one also got all its moons’ names from Greek mythology. (So did Neptune, but the last thing Kaito wanted to think about right now was deities of _water_.)

Pandora. That was an easy one to remember. She’d made the mistake of opening a box that unleashed all kinds of misery and evil _(like from this_ bastard _who won’t let go of my_ hair _)_ upon the world. But it didn’t seem fair that she’d been associated with all that crap, not when she couldn’t have known what would happen if she opened it. The bad guy should have been the one who’d _put_ all that stuff in the box in the first place and given it to her. Who the hell’d even do that?

And hadn’t Pandora gone on to close the box in such a hurry that she’d left hope, the one good thing, trapped inside? Yeah, something like that. But, again, hardly her fault – so much bad stuff had come out of it that it’d only be natural to want to shut the rest away as tightly as she could, not realising she was shutting in something she shouldn’t have been.

The world grew tighter and tighter, thinking became a luxury, and the only thing Kaito could hold onto was the name. _Pandora. Pandora. Dammit, let me breathe already, you asshole! Pandora. Pandora…!_

After an eternity more of repeating that name, he was finally able to gasp for breath. His sidekicks were there on Pandora (and Takehira _still_ didn’t sound like he was growing remotely tired of this, _damn_ him), and then Kaito was under again.

Another of Saturn’s moons… Prometheus, that was one. A titan or something who’d gifted fire to humanity, and the gods had subjected him to eternal tor – punishment for it. Which just seemed thoroughly _wrong_ to Kaito. Punishing anyone _(torturing, like they’re torturing_ me _)_ was messed-up at the best of times, but punishing someone for _doing good_ was even worse. Prometheus had given the humans important knowledge, something that’d _help_ them! The gods should have praised him and been _proud_ of him for that, not the exact opposite. Morons.

Everything grew almost unbearable, like always, but it wouldn’t be eternal for him, it _wouldn’t_. He just had to cling to that name and remember it. _C’mon – Prometheus – just a little longer, it’s gotta be soon, Prometheus, it’s gotta be, Prometheus, Prometheus, Prometheus…!_

Up at last. Breathe. Where were they? They were on Prometheus. And down again.

Now, then… Atlas. Right? That was another one, yeah. He was—

A savage kick suddenly hit Kaito right in the middle of his chest, somehow, and his ribs burst into spiking tendrils of blinding pain. He couldn’t stop the gasp – and water rushed in, too much of it, burning his throat, his lungs, choking him. He tried to surface but was forced down even harder, tried in vain to somehow cough out the acrid water that was flooding him without breathing more in, his whole chest in agony, inside and out. Everything grew tight, searing, suffocating, too painful, too _soon_ ; he struggled and thrashed against it with strength he didn’t know he still had, but the iron grip of the hand pressing on his head remained firm, cruel, merciless, holding him under for too long, too long, too long, _too long_

_no no no no no I’m gonna die I’m gonna drown it hurts it hurts I can’t breathe I can’t breathe please PLEASE_

And then he was up and there was nothing but sweet merciful air and his wet, coughing, gasping breaths of desperate relief—

—until a voice asked, “Where are they?”

…Right, yeah. That was what he was doing. The Greek stuff. No, the _moons_. “Th-They’re on…” His mind was blank. What was the next one again? “I-I d – I don’t…”

He opened his eyes, blinking, as if the name might be helpfully written in front of him. His own drenched face stared back at him, shattered and lost and pleading. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t _think_.

He felt the familiar shifting grip on his hair, saw his reflection’s eyes widen. “W-Wait no…” He could still remember _no don’t_ —

—and he was plunged back into hell.

Kaito frantically fought to stop his mind from reeling, tried to get it to work with him and _focus_. The pain had died down by now, mostly, a little – _enough_ – and he wasn’t so _pathetic_ as to let something like this stop him.

He just needed to fix his screw-up. It was just once, just an outlier. If he fixed it this time, then it’d be like it never even happened, and not like he was about to _lose_. He wasn’t going to lose. He couldn’t, because if he did…

…He hadn’t even _started_ trying to remember the damn moon’s name already.

_C’mon,_ think _, what was it again? One of Saturn’s moons – Titan? No, I already did that one before, that’s the obvious one. Damn it!_

If he couldn’t think of the stupid moon and keep this going, then what the hell was that going to look like? Like he’d given up and _lost_ , not even because he ran out of knowledge (he knew _so many more_ , he _did_ , if only he could _think_ right now), but just because…

…Because he was too _weak_. Because he was weak enough to be letting this _get to him_ and freak him out exactly like Takehira wanted.

Frantically, he tried to push that thought away and get back to thinking about space, but the smothering water blotted out everything from his head except that image of his own face staring back at him, that _look_ in his eyes. Never mind his ridiculous space fantasy – this was the reality of things, the reality of _him_. Takehira and his henchmen had been seeing Kaito like this _every single time_ , and if that was the case, then what had this whole space thing even been to them? Just a pointless, transparent façade that didn’t hide anything at all?

Suffocation closed in, room to think grew too narrow, and he couldn’t rein in the one thought that remained, going around and around in his head as he struggled and thrashed and suffered to no avail. _I’m being so pathetic. I’m so pathetic I’m so pathetic I’m so pathetic—_

As Kaito was finally pulled to surface with desperate gasps, it dawned on him that he hadn’t even come _close_ to remembering the moon’s name, or a different one, or _anything_. (As if it would have even mattered if he _had_.)

“Where are they?” There was just a hint of smug satisfaction in the usual question this time, and it filled Kaito with dread. Takehira knew he was winning. Last time hadn’t been a brief outlier; it’d been an awakening to reality.

Kaito tried to shake his head as much as he could despite the grip holding him firm, but seeing his paltry head-shake in the mirror, he just looked like a drenched, cornered animal. Not defiant at all.

The hand in his hair shifted, and Kaito couldn’t help but notice his shoulders, his whole _body_ tense up, like he was trying to cower away from the water, as if he even _could_. He was thrust under helplessly, bubbles rippling from his mouth in a tiny, wretched gasp at finding himself trapped down here again. And hadn’t all _this_ been basically happening every time, too?

He was scared. Damn it, _damn it_ , he was _scared_ ; he’d been scared this _whole time_ …!

Takehira could see it. His henchmen could see it. It must have been _so obvious_ to them all along. Kaito had just been ridiculously, pointlessly trying to run away from the truth and delude himself with his stupid planets game, because he sure as hell hadn’t been fooling anyone _else_ with it. Hell, the whole thing must’ve only made him look even _more_ pathetically desperate.

_“Someone who_ thinks _he’s strong.”_

_No, shut up! Damn it, why is that_ right _? Why is he_ right _about me!? Why was he_ always right _!?_

That wasn’t supposed to be the _truth_ about Kaito. It _couldn’t_ be, because if it was, if he really was this weak, then…

How… how the hell was he ever going to protect his sidekicks this way?

He was meant to be a _hero_. He _needed_ to be one, he needed to not _fail_ them, but – heroes didn’t look even a little bit like Kaito did now. Heroes didn’t get hurt, or _lose_. Heroes didn’t get _scared_ of anything.

Especially not like this: as everything grew tighter and he could feel the water threatening to flood his face and lungs, heavy fear was already flooding his whole _body_ like molten metal – just like he’d been stubbornly ignoring it _always_ doing, _every time_. Overcome with blinding panic, he shuddered and thrashed helplessly, his mouth open and filling with water in a breathless, silent scream.

When he was finally allowed to surface with frightened, moaning gasps for air, Kaito didn’t even want to hear Takehira’s smug voice rubbing in his victory. He wanted even less to see his own pathetic, terrified face looking back at him. He just kept his eyes shut, heaving as many shaking breaths as possible while he still could, waiting, waiting, until he found himself under again with a bubbling exhaled gasp of misery.

_I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die here._ All those planets and moons whose names he _knew_ and just couldn’t remember right now (if he _could_ , would that somehow fix everything, make him less scared?) – he still wanted to see them all one day.

And more than that, more than _anything_ , he just wanted to see Shuichi and Maki Roll again – but…

_No, damn it, why am I being like this!?_ He _knew_ these bastards needed him alive. He _knew_ they wouldn’t actually drown him. So there was _absolutely no excuse_ for him being this scared. Yet here he was, pathetically freaking out over something he knew wasn’t even happening, like the very _opposite_ of a hero.

After how many more terror-filled dunkings he didn’t even know – three? Four? Five? (too many; _too many_ ) – Kaito had utterly stopped being able to even begin coming up with another moon, with any other kind of meaningless distraction at all. He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus, all because he was too stupidly _frightened_.

“Where are they?” Takehira asked yet again, like it still _mattered_. Like he hadn’t already thoroughly proven just how weak and pathetic Kaito was, just how _right_ he’d been about him. He’d already won. He’d already _won_.

“G… G… G-Go to hell…” Kaito choked out, his voice cracking, cringing in anticipation of being shoved back there himself. He took a shuddering breath and screwed his eyes shut, waiting, _whimpering_ …

…only for Takehira to yank his hair _sideways_ instead and fling him to the ground like discarded trash. Kaito landed hard on his torn shoulder and howled in agony as it jolted every bruise and fractured bone in his body.

_It… it’s over…?_ He wanted to be glad it was over, but his lungs still had too many itching speckles of burning water in them that needed to get free. All he could do was finally give way to the spluttering, wrenching coughs that had been waiting, lingering inside him all this time. They grew fiercer, to the point that he couldn’t even think straight, helplessly racked by the coughing fit that took hold of him, that tore through his throat and tasted like iron and made his chest feel like it was about to explode with each and every one.

Finally, mercifully, it died down, and Kaito regained some semblance of control. He just lay there for a while, gasping miserably for breath, shaking, hurting. As he gazed straight ahead of him at the wall and the plumbing beneath the sink, he faintly registered the splatter of blood on the ground just past his face. That… that was an awful lot of blood that really shouldn’t have been sloshing around loose inside him, should it.

Now that he could breathe freely and wasn’t gripped by the constant terror of imminent drowning, all of his other reasons to be suffering were making themselves known again, too. Aside from the aching pain all over, he was still starving, and still somehow _thirsty_ despite never wanting to see another drop of water in his life.

And even though the stupid fear should have been _gone_ by now, his body wouldn’t stop _shaking_ , his heartbeat pounding too loud and fast in his ears.

It wasn’t just the water, was it. He’d always been scared of _everything_.

Because they weren’t going to stop. This wasn’t the end of this nightmare – they were just going to pull out something else, something somehow even worse. They’d never stop until they broke him.

(How much more could it even _take_?)


	7. Chapter 6 – HERO

A part of Kaito wished he could keep lying here forever, not doing anything at all, not _thinking_ anything at all, just letting water drip from his fringe as the seconds stretched on into infinity.

But he had to do _something_. He had to at least _try_ to be the hero that he was growing increasingly, dreadfully certain he’d never really deserved to call himself from the start.

Kaito rolled awkwardly onto his back, groaning as this only increased the pain in his arms that were crossed and bound together back there. In an attempt to look just a tiny bit less pathetic, he tried to sit upright, fighting and straining only for his grunt of exertion to turn into a scream of pain halfway through, and damn it, he _couldn’t_. Even restrained like this, this should have been just like doing a single sit-up, something he must have done thousands of in his time, but it wasn’t anything like it, not when _everything hurt_. (Not when he was this _weak_.)

Takehira was standing over him, looking down on him. Kaito tried to at least put on a defiant glare, but it just felt like a frightened grimace and not remotely convincing.

 _Was it_ ever _convincing? Or was I just deluding myself about that, too?_

And as if his shaky breathing wasn’t bad enough, it also kept stupidly hitching upwards at the end of each outward breath. He hated it, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t quite get his body to _quit_ it already.

The door to the room – so _close_ to him from here, yet he didn’t stand a hope of ever reaching it in this state – creaked open and closed again as a couple of his torturers came back inside. Kaito hadn’t even noticed them leave. One of them handed some kind of small brown bottle to Takehira, and then both of them began kicking Kaito in the side, _again_. Why wouldn’t they _stop doing that_!?

Kaito tried to curl up, but it was impossible with his arms crossed behind his back and with them kicking him so hard that it was rolling his whole body over, kick by kick. He screwed his eyes shut, despising his stupid rapid breathing and the way he couldn’t stop a few pathetic whimpering noises escaping him from the pain. (Maybe they were quiet enough that those assholes couldn’t hear them all the way up there.)

He only opened his eyes when the kicking had stopped, leaving him lying awkwardly on his side again, trying to ignore the tearing pain from his right shoulder pressing into the ground, the countless other pains all over his body. He was several metres back from where he’d been before, giving him a clearer view of Takehira leaning against the wall next to the sink, one leg crossed casually over the other. Apparently all that kicking had been for the sole purpose of moving Kaito backwards – as if dragging him wasn’t already painful and demeaning enough.

“Now, then,” Takehira began, “let me help you understand what is going to happen next.”

Trying to slow his breathing again, with little success, Kaito looked at him with what he hoped was at least _slightly_ a glare (but probably wasn’t at all). This was the first time Takehira had bothered to explain anything they’d been about to do to him, rather than just going ahead and _doing_ it. Something about that fact was precisely the opposite of comforting.

“There’s this poison, you see, called Strike-9.” Takehira was still holding the small brown bottle he’d been given, swirling it idly. “Or, as we in the business sometimes call it, ‘lethal torture poison’.”

Kaito shut his eyes and tried very hard not to think about anything at all. Takehira was just saying words. Just words.

“The ‘lethal’ part comes from the fact that the one of the poison’s effects is to tighten the respiratory muscles, so that the subject very gradually loses the ability to breathe. …Which, admittedly, is rather inconvenient for our purposes here.”

They were just words. Just _words_. Not something to get _scared about_.

“Luckily, there exists another drug that can counteract this part.” Kaito flinched as he suddenly felt the prick of a needle in his right forearm. He opened his eyes with a start, trying to twist his head to look behind him at the cultist that was kneeling back there. Where had a syringe come from? He hadn’t even seen one.

Takehira went on like nothing had just happened. “If administered along with Strike-9, this drug will relax the respiratory muscles just enough to keep the subject alive and breathing, for the entire twelve to twenty-four hour period that Strike-9 is in their system.”

Kaito suddenly shut his mouth very, very firmly, drawing ragged, rapid breaths through his nose as he stared wide-eyed at the bottle in Takehira’s hand.

“That’s all it does, however. Meaning that someone can experience the full effects of a would-be-lethal dose of Strike-9 without the release of death early on.”

Kaito let out a gasp – too loud, too _panicked_ – as he felt another syringe prick his left arm. It hit him with ice-cold dread that the bottle had never been the poison – the poison was _here_. He tried to resist, tried to pull his arm away somehow, but he couldn’t even _move_ it against his restraints. He kept struggling anyway, frantically, pointlessly, but it was too late. The poison was already inside him.

He could feel the pound of his heartbeat across his whole body, and he hated the speed of it – not just for the proof of how terrified he was, but because it’d make the poison circulate _faster_ —

Damn it, _no_ , he needed to _stop_ freaking out like this! The pain hadn’t even _begun_ yet. And he didn’t even know how bad it was really going to be – for all he knew, Takehira was exaggerating, even straight-up lying, only saying all that stuff about paralysed lungs and pain worse than death _(for twenty-four freaking hours…!)_ to try and scare him.

_But it’s working, isn’t it!?_

Kaito furiously tried to shut up that pathetic gibbering voice in his head, to tell himself over and over that no matter what the poison was going to do to him, even if Takehira really wasn’t exaggerating, he _could_ handle it, he _could_ … but his insistences just sounded desperate and feeble and empty. (Just like they must have _always_ been.)

An unnerving tingling was already beginning to spread from Kaito’s left arm as he watched the one with the syringe that’d sealed his fate stand up behind him, and… walk away. All four torturers who weren’t Takehira just up and left the room, their job apparently over. The door slammed shut behind them with a horrible kind of finality to it.

This was the first time Takehira had been alone with Kaito. As if he knew that Kaito was weak enough now that he no longer needed to outnumber him.

“Now, I have here with me the antidote to Strike-9.” Takehira gestured with the bottle in his hand, still every bit as if this was simply a lecture on poisons and not about to become an all-too-real live demonstration. “Drinking this will break down the poison and make the pain go away within minutes.”

He placed it pointedly on the edge of the sink, in clear view of Kaito. “I’ll leave this here, and when you want me to give it to you, you will tell me where Harukawa and Saihara are hiding.”

‘When’. Not ‘if’. Damn him. Damn him to hell.

Kaito’s gaze darted nervously around the walls and ceiling, as if that’d find him any kind of _escape_. The tingling had spread from his arm to his whole upper body, starting to even work its way down his legs, and it’d intensified into something more like constant electric shocks. All his injuries from before were still a persistent lingering ache pressing against his consciousness, but this pain was fresh, active, lively.

It wasn’t so bad yet. He could stay on top of it for now, forcing down the twitches that were beginning to arise, choking off the gasps that wanted to escape him before they left his throat. But… it hadn’t even been more than a minute or two. There was no way it wouldn’t get infinitely worse than this. Takehira had talked about this poison as if it was slow-acting, as if the pain would just keep gradually building, and building and building and building and—

Kaito fervently shook his head to try and shut out that thought, never mind that it made his pounding forehead hurt more. He looked up at Takehira, and just for the sake of having _anything_ to do that wasn’t restlessly wondering when the poison would really take hold (and what it would _do to him_ when it did), he pushed down the pain and tried to get himself to speak.

It wasn’t easy; he hadn’t said anything since that massive coughing fit, and his throat was raw and dry. Worse than that, though, when he finally managed hoarse words, was the way his voice was blatantly, pathetically shaking.

“Wh-Why? If you… h-had this… I-I mean… Wh-Why only… now?”

Damn it, he couldn’t even form a coherent _sentence_ either. Why the hell was he freaking out over this _so much_ when it had barely even started?

“Because you’re almost broken now.”

Kaito screwed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead into the ground as crackling pain danced across his chest and arms. “Shut up…” he mumbled, shuddering. “Shut up, shut up, shut up…!” Takehira was wrong, Kaito _wasn’t_ almost broken, he wasn’t, he _couldn’t_ be.

But… he hadn’t even come _close_ to the worst of it yet, and already he’d been reduced to such a pathetic trembling mess.

 _What if he’s_ right _, again? What if this is_ it _?_

In a sudden overwhelming urge to _never have to find that out_ , Kaito roared in desperation and forced his body into action. His arms and legs were bound as unbreakably as always, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still _move_. He set his sights on the sink, the bottle on the edge of it, and fervently squirmed and flopped his way across the floor towards it, ignoring how much it aggravated pains both old and new.

He must have looked more like a dying fish than a hero, but that didn’t _matter_. If Kaito could beat Takehira at his game, get at that antidote for _himself_ , then he’d never have to worry about how broken he may or may not have already been, and everything would be _fine_.

At the base of the sink, Kaito mustered all his willpower, urging his stupid body to do better than that worthless attempt earlier, and _heaved_ himself upright with an agonised scream of exertion. He kneeled up even higher on shaking legs and propped his chest against the sink’s edge, next to the antidote, close enough to reach for the bottle with his mouth…

…and promptly knocked it right into the sink, where it sank beneath the faintly red-tinged water.

Kaito stared at the submerged bottle, heaving for breath from just this effort alone, his neck tensed as he half expected to feel that familiar horrible push on the back of his head any second. Was he seriously going to _willingly_ shove his face into that water again, just to… what? Grab the bottle out of there with his _teeth_? _Unscrew_ the bottle, with just his teeth?

He caught sight of himself in the mirror, and his disgrace of a reflection’s face twisted into bitter accusation.

Shit _, just look how_ desperate _I am. I wouldn’t even need the antidote if I wasn’t so weak. What kinda pathetic excuse for a hero even am I? Why the hell am I getting so_ scared _?_

Kaito couldn’t look at himself any more. Grimacing, he shut his eyes in defeat, letting his body topple sideways to the ground with a jolt of vicious pain.

Down on the floor, he drew shuddering breaths, curling in on himself, not wanting to think about _anything_. The poison had grown fiercer in the time he’d been refusing to pay attention to it, pain lancing up and down his already-aching muscles and making them twitch and tremble. It only got worse as Takehira’s boot came and pushed him roughly onto his back, then his other side, then his front. It pulled at all of his injuries as he was gradually rolled back to where he’d started from, all of his meaningless effort casually undone in a few pushes of a foot. Takehira didn’t kick; he didn’t even need to. Bound and shaking from the pain that was overtaking his whole body, Kaito could barely do anything to resist.

On his side, at a stop at last, Kaito twisted his head to see Takehira holding the antidote and peering down at him.

“Let me amend my earlier remark. You’re evidently broken already.”

Kaito grimaced and pressed his forehead into the ground with a furious whimper, hating the fact that Takehira was _right_. Why would he have made such a pointlessly desperate move just now, unless – unless he already knew he couldn’t—?

 _I can’t, I’m not gonna be able to handle this, I’m not strong enough, I’m_ scared _—_

“You know that it’s inevitable. Telling me what I want to know right now would save you so much needless suffering.”

With a long, high-pitched grunt of anguish, eyes screwed shut, Kaito shook his head as fiercely as he could.

“Still doing things the hard way, I see. Your loss.” Robes swished as Takehira moved back to the sink, followed by the deliberately loud clink of the bottle being placed on the edge again.

The room became silent, except for Kaito’s own harsh, ragged breathing through gritted teeth and the pitiful moans and whimpers that he didn’t always manage to bite off before they left his throat. He couldn’t stop shuddering pathetically as he lay there, the poison spiking and jabbing at every part of him. Takehira didn’t matter any more – he wasn’t even the one _hurting_ Kaito, not now that the pain was coming from within him, like his body was attacking itself.

There was _nothing_ he could do, no possible way he could stop this, just like there never had been for _any_ of the things he’d suffered in here. All Kaito could do was lie there, hurting and terrified and _helpless_ , as he waited for the poison to grow powerful enough to tear him apart.

And when it did, when this broke him, Maki Roll and Shuichi—

_They’re gonna die._

_They’re gonna die, because of_ me _, because I’m too_ weak _to protect them, because I’m nothing but a pathetic_ failure _of a hero—_

His shaking breaths grew faster and faster, uncontrollably so, as he felt an awful clenching heat build up behind his eyes and throat. Realising what this was, Kaito desperately tried to stop it, to hold it in, screwing up his face, swallowing, his lip trembling – _no, not this too, not on top of everything else, c’mon, c’mon, I can’t be_ this _pathetic, I can’t—_

But of _course_ he was – as the dam broke, Kaito began to just sob, helplessly, uselessly, as if such a miserable show of self-pity could ever _make up_ for how badly he was _failing_ them. He grunted in anguished frustration at himself amongst his tears, but it didn’t stop them coming. Unable to use his hands to cover it, he pressed his tear-stained face into the ground in shame, a hopeless effort to try and hide how appallingly _weak_ he was being. Not that it even _mattered_ whether Takehira saw or not; he couldn’t hide it from _himself_ any more.

He was letting them down, so thoroughly and utterly that it couldn’t possibly be worse. Shuichi and Maki Roll, his sideki… no, _not_ his sidekicks, he’d _never_ deserved to call them that. But even so, even if they were never that, they were still his _best friends_. They were the best friends Kaito had ever had in his life, and – and, because of _him_ , he was _never going to see them again_.

Kaito realised, like a stone in his throat, that he was going to have to _live with this_ , somehow. To live with _himself_ , knowing that this was _his fault_ : _his_ weakness, _his_ failure that had ended his best friends’ lives. Because of course Takehira was going to let him go once it was over, wasn’t he? Kaito wasn’t important, not like Maki Roll and Shuichi. Not important enough to kill off, not important enough to protect them. Not important for anything except killing _them_.

In amongst his tears, unbidden, Kaito was struck with the fleeting, terrible image of himself standing over Shuichi and Maki Roll’s _graves_ , just like he’d stood over his parents’ graves as a kid. An even louder wailing sob left his throat at the thought of it. How much _worse_ would it be, knowing that _he’d put them there_?

He couldn’t control the sobs at all any more; they grew huge and loud and desperate. Somewhere beneath it all, he could feel the poison becoming more vicious, clawing at him with electric tendrils as it tried to force him to twitch and writhe, but he was already writhing and heaving so much in grief. The physical pain was nothing right now, dwarfed by the dreadful twisting in his chest and gut at the thought of the inevitable conclusion to this nightmare.

Kaito utterly lost himself for a while, not to the pain or the fear or the poison, but to the agony of his failure. He didn’t know how long he spent like that, shuddering, hyperventilating, overcome with enormous, bawling sobs – but, perhaps… perhaps that was better? The longer he spent barely even being able to feel the poison’s wrath beneath his own anguish, the longer Maki Roll and Shuichi would get to stay alive, wouldn’t they? – but even then, it’d only be for a few more moments. Not enough. Never enough to _save_ them.

Slowly, more out of emotional exhaustion than anything, the sobbing and heaving began to even itself out, leaving Kaito all too aware of how much the poison had intensified while he’d been busy. The twitches had grown violent, wanting him to do more than just twitch, wanting his muscles to jerk and contract without his say-so, and it only pulled and pulled and hurt him even more when he refused. There was just no way to _win_ against it, not when he was this _weak_.

And he hadn’t _stopped_ crying – of _course_ he hadn’t – it’d just taken a backseat to the pain: pathetic teary whimpering at how much it _hurt_ , like exactly the kind of a thing a hero would never do.

He’d… actually believed it until just a few days ago, hadn’t he? – that _he_ was one of those strong unflappable heroes who could do anything he put his mind to. The idea seemed almost laughable now, like nothing more than one of his childhood games, just a wishful fiction. Where the hell was all that bluster and bravado he’d had at the beginning? Nowhere – because it’d never been real in the first place. He’d just deluded himself into _thinking_ he was strong. Those words had stuck with him so much because he must’ve already known they were true the whole time.

There’d _never_ been a way out of this whole thing, from the moment he’d been captured and brought into this hell. Not when he’d _always_ been so freaking scared of all of it, ever since he’d realised he was going to be _tortured_ and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Stifling another stupid pointless sob in a resigned kind of frustration at himself, Kaito rolled awkwardly onto his back and stared up at the ceiling through blurry tears. Lying in this position helped, a little – it got gravity to work with him in stopping his body from moving and jerking against his will. He could feel spasms trying to take hold of him, and the more he fought to stop them, the more the poison fought back, pulling on his muscles even harder, aggravating the pain, making his every breath a shuddering grunt of exertion just to hold on.

But if he didn’t fight, if he let the poison have its way with him, it’d be worse. He’d be taken over, utterly helpless. Just like the kickings he could never prevent, like the cuffs that had dragged and swung him around like a puppet, like the hand that had held him underwater as he panicked and thrashed for his life, like everything everything _everything_ that’d been done to him in this hell.

Kaito was so, so scared of going through that again. That crushing sense of total helplessness had been the worst, the worst part of all of this, even worse than all the pain; he felt so horribly sure that any more of it would shatter him.

So he was fighting it, for as long as he could. Other than the trembling and whimpering that just wouldn’t stop, he was staying in control for as long as possible by forcing his body to do _nothing at all_ , because that was _his choice_. It was the only choice he had left. But, _damn it_ , he knew with twisting, certain dread that the poison would overpower him soon enough. The helplessness would come for him anyway, never mind what he wanted, because what _he_ wanted had never mattered in this hellhole.

He shouldn’t… he shouldn’t have even come on the run with Maki Roll and Shuichi in the first place. He’d wanted to protect them, somehow, but that didn’t matter, did it? Not when he _couldn’t_. That terrifying night when they’d been about to leave – he’d _already_ been uselessly afraid of everything that was unfolding, even back then, of course he had – Maki Roll had told him he had no connection to any of this, no reason for the cult to target him. _“You could walk away from this and be safe. You… You should.”_

And Kaito had blithely insisted on coming anyway, like it was just obvious that he should, like he was a hero who wasn’t scared, like they _needed him_ and there was _anything at all_ he could have even done to help them. The thought sounded like a joke now – and Maki Roll had _known_ , hadn’t she, because why else would she have tried to stop him from coming?

His muscles grew tenser and tenser. The pain kept pulling at him, _squeezing_ at him as he fought his own body, and a strangled scream forced its way out of his throat despite his efforts to hold it in, because of course he was that weak. He’d never be able to fight this forever; this nightmare had proven over and over that he was too weak to fight _anything_ for long.

If only Kaito had _listened_ to Maki Roll. If only he hadn’t kept selfishly pretending to be the hero that he should have already known he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be here right now getting her and Shuichi _killed_.

And then he’d just _kept faking it_ while they’d been on the run, too, rather than admitting the truth. He’d told Shuichi and Maki Roll that everything was going to be all right, putting on a hollow grin, acting like this was just one big ‘adventure’. But all the while, beneath it, he’d been _so lost_ , so out of his depth next to the ones who could actually solve the case and keep them safe. He’d been uselessly scared as hell the whole time, just like now, never a hero at all.

Another scream, louder, worse, tore itself out of Kaito’s throat as he fought the losing battle to hold down the poison’s trembling fury. He whimpered to himself on ragged breaths – _nothing_ was going to be all right, despite his stupid empty words to his friends back then. Had his act even managed to convince them, or had he only been fooling himself, like usual?

The screams became more and more frequent, and in between them Kaito’s sobs grew harsher, wheezier. His chest was getting tighter, making it an agonising exertion just to _breathe_ on top of everything else he was suffering. Takehira had said the drug to keep him alive through this would make breathing _possible_ ; he’d never said it would be easy.

_Or maybe – the drug’s just – not even working at all?_

That thought should have been frightening. Yet, in some disturbingly twisted, backwards way, Kaito found instead that it almost seemed _promising_. If the drug didn’t work, if his chest kept tightening and tightening like this until the poison cut off his breathing entirely, then…

_“Dying sooner is the nicer way out. It’s much better than being tortured alive.”_

This was what Maki Roll had meant by that. Not that dying was better than being tortured at all – but that dying before _breaking_ from it was preferable to the alternative.

And it was. Damn it, _anything_ that would keep Shuichi and Maki Roll safe from the cult was better than the alternative, never mind what happened to him. Kaito had already resolved to himself, during those long, lonely, terrified hours in the hideout as it was his turn to be on watch while they slept, that if it came down to it, if he had to, he would die for them.

That would work. That would get them out of this alive, if Kaito just _died_ right here and now.

But… he still didn’t _want_ to. He was fighting, wheezing, clawing for every breath, and he didn’t want to _stop_ , not even knowing that it might just be the only way to save his friends. Despite the hellish agony he was in right now, despite that his future would be full of nothing but grief and guilt if this kept up, Kaito couldn’t stop trying to _live_.

Having realised that he’d die for his friends was one thing, but he’d pictured it as something like jumping in front of a bullet, protecting them through some heroic _action_ _(hah, as if I ever could have)_ while knowing that his life might just end as a result. Actively _trying to die_ , purely for the sake of not being alive any more, was something else entirely. He couldn’t… Kaito just couldn’t wrap his brain around that at all, no matter what it would cause.

And even if he could, Takehira was the one who’d trained Maki Roll to consider that an option in times like this. He’d already taken every precaution against it, tying Kaito up so painfully tightly that he could barely move at all, except in all the ways he _didn’t want to_ that were coming for him anyway. And his chest hadn’t grown any tighter than it already was – it might even have loosened just a little. The drug _was_ working. There’d never been any way out, not a single thing Kaito could ever have done to save his friends from his weakness.

He let out a sudden scream of shock and panic as his legs just _kicked_ , violently, jolting his whole body with the power of it. With an anguished, sobbing grunt, he forced it down, forced his legs still before it escalated further. He fought to stay rigid, hating that he’d let something slip through, hating how he was getting even more afraid at just the thought of it.

_No, stop – please – I don’t – don’t want this – not yet, not this soon – please—_

He was getting weaker, weak enough to not be able to hold it at all. It was coming, it was overpowering him, it was going to be here so soon and there was _nothing_ he could do to stop it – but…

 _Kaito_ was useless, helpless to save his friends, but, maybe… maybe they could still save themselves? If Shuichi had already finished the investigation, if he was coming here to end the cult _right now_ before the poison broke Kaito _(how much – how much longer can it even be? I can – I can barely—),_ then, then everything would still be fine in the end. Shuichi hadn’t… hadn’t talked like he’d be done by today, though – Kaito had only been here for like two days, right? _(it only took two days to break me)_ – but… then again, Shuichi was _amazing_. Kaito believed in him, _so much_ , so maybe, maybe, _maybe_ …

Damn it, it was _so_ _hard_ to hold down the poison, the tempest of raging pain inside him that refused to let up. He could feel its strength swelling and expanding further and further, forcing scream after desperate scream out of him as it grew. It was like trying to hold a lid over a supernova, like trying to hold his _breath_ as his lungs felt like they were about to burst, and he couldn’t – he couldn’t hold it much longer.

_But if – just a little more – if Shuichi’s coming – then—_

Then they’d all get out of this alive, all three of them – but – still – there was no way Shuichi and Maki Roll would want anything to do with Kaito once this was over, right? Not when he was such a pathetic, horrendous failure who was never really the hero he’d tried to make them think he was.

His legs kicked again, once, _twice_ , with a sharp scream each time, until he managed to get them under control and hold them rigid, trembling. And not just trembling from the effort of staying in place – he was so freaking terrified.

Maybe, somehow, if they saved themselves, Kaito could somehow paper over this weakness and put on that fake smile again, pretend to be the hero that he wasn’t, and then they’d still want him around. Would they even buy it? And even if they _did_ , how could he ever look them in the eye again, knowing how weak he really was, knowing his weakness had been moments away from _killing them_?

No – it didn’t matter, as long as _they_ got to live. _Kaito_ didn’t matter.

Kaito let out a strangled scream as his back arched for a terrifying second before he forced his body to lie flat again. Moments – it really was just moments away. It had to be.

 _Please, Shuichi, hurry – not – not for my sake, for yours and Maki Roll’s – I can’t hold it – it_ hurts _—_

Kaito stared desperately up at the ceiling as his body twitched and juddered and jerked against him, grunting, _screaming_ from the effort of forcing it down. It felt just like all those countless nightmarish times underwater, struggling and fighting to hold out even just a few moments longer against an unstoppable force – something had to give, _something_ had to give—

His si – his best friends, Shuichi and Maki Roll – damn it, Kaito loved them _so much_ , they were the best, they deserved the whole universe, this couldn’t be happening, this _couldn’t_ —

 _No – please,_ please _let me be stronger than this – somehow – strong enough to keep them safe – that’s the only thing that matters – I can’t bear it—_

He arched again, kicked again, and this time he couldn’t hold it down at all – the poison wrested control from him entirely, taking hold of his whole body, making him kick and arch and thrash and writhe. He wasn’t strong enough; he stopped trying to fight it at all, giving himself to the helplessness despite how much he hated it, hoping that maybe at least this way it wouldn’t hurt as much – _maybe_ —

But it didn’t – it just hurt _more_ , in a whole new way, amplifying all of his injuries that he’d at least _tried_ to avoid putting undue pressure on until now. The poison didn’t care, the violent spasms wrenching and tearing at them ruthlessly, turning old pains into fresh new agony. Kaito was a prisoner inside himself, his juddering screams the only proof that he was even still in there as his own body tortured him, worse than anything that’d been done to him from the outside.

 _No, no no no, I’m not strong enough, it’s happening already, Shuichi hasn’t made it, he’s not coming, he’s not gonna make it in time before I_ kill him _—!_

Finally, mercifully, the poison’s grip released him – temporarily. Kaito regained some semblance of control over himself, and he used it to curl up with huge gasps of relief that quickly degenerated into whimpers of misery and fear.

That’d only been the first. There would be so many more like that, over and over again for what might as well have been forever. He couldn’t stop them any more; he was so exhausted, and helpless, and _weak_.

This was going to break him, and his friends were going to die, and he couldn’t – he needed—

_Help… help me… Maki Roll, Shuichi, please, help me…_

They weren’t here; they weren’t coming – but even so, Kaito shut his eyes and pictured their faces as hard as he could, trying to imagine they were with him anyway, trying to hold onto how _proud_ he’d always been of them, to give him any kind of strength at all.

 _I can’t do this on my own, I’m not strong enough, not strong enough to be a hero for you guys, I’m so scared… But_ you’re _heroes, both of you…_

They were, they were _his_ heroes, they’d always been so strong, so amazing – so maybe, if he thought of them, he could manage to be even just a tiny bit of a hero for them, too?

The poison took hold again, gradually, cruelly, snatching away Kaito’s autonomy bit by bit. It jerked and contorted his body like a doll, like a slab of meat, like there wasn’t still a _person_ inside here, suffering and terrified and helplessly, helplessly trapped.

Everything about it still hurt just as much. He was still just as _frightened_.

Those thoughts hadn’t been enough. Whimpering in desperation, Kaito redoubled his efforts, trying to remember the way Shuichi and Maki Roll smiled, to picture them smiling at him – but that was so much harder than just picturing them at all. Why would they ever look at him that way now?

 _I know, I’ve failed you so bad, I don’t deserve you, but please, just help me do this_ one thing _, for you guys, you shouldn’t have to_ die _for my weakness, it’s not fair on you guys, it’s not fair, please…_

It hurt so much _in between_ , too, all his scrapes and bruises and fractures just throbbing, stabbing at him constantly with an agony that the convulsions had torn out into the open again. And all the while, the poison’s fury still rampaged through him like fire in his blood, even when it wasn’t cruelly puppeteering him. Now that he’d stopped bothering to fight to stay still, Kaito spent the moments he was in control of himself writhing and twisting around on the floor _anyway_ , just to try and get any kind of relief from the raging, frenzied pain all over, but… nothing he did made it hurt any less at all.

_I believe in you guys, so much – can’t… can’t you… give me some of your strength…? Even just a little bit – please, it hurts, I can’t… I can’t take much more like this—_

The convulsions kept coming, ravaging him over and over, the agony and the demeaning, visceral helplessness worse each time. Throughout all of them, Kaito never stopped clinging to Shuichi and Maki Roll, trying so hard to hold onto the thought of how strong they were in the hope that it’d give _him_ strength too. But it wasn’t working. It wasn’t helping. He was still just as _weak_ as he always had been.

 _How can you guys be so strong? Maki Roll, how – how did you go through torture like this like it was_ nothing _? Shuichi, you know they’re out to_ kill _you, how can you just – just stay focused on finding the truth like you’re not even_ scared— _?_

He felt another one approaching and tried desperately to hold it down again, to control it like he’d done before, even though he knew it’d be hopeless – and of course it was. He was too weak to even do that any more, too weak to stop it _hurting_ —

How _!? I don’t understand, I don’t understand you guys at all, I don’t—_

His arms would have been spasming too, if they could; as it was, they were straining so hard to move that the ropes were slicing into him like knives, his shoulders tearing even further than they had been already. He was sweating, his body too hot, desperate for the slightest drop of water, still struggling to even just breathe. It was so much – everything was so much, all over.

 _I wish – so bad – I wish I was a hero like you guys, then you wouldn’t have to die – if I could, if I could just face these things like you can without even_ flinching _—_

The next convulsion took hold, gripping him even harder than usual, wrenching, twisting his body in slower, almost deliberate movements, arching his back, gradually, agonizingly, far enough that he wasn’t even touching the ground any more between his feet and his head—

 _—damn it, it_ hurts _, it hurts so much and I’m so so scared and I’m not strong enough, I’m not strong enough, I’m not, I’m not—_

—as burning, twisting muscles kept arching his back further, further than he’d even thought possible, he could have sworn he heard, _felt_ something inside him just _crack—_

The agony was overpowering, like lightning splitting him in two. Kaito threw open his mouth and screamed, _on purpose_ , just screamed and screamed and _screamed_ , louder and more desperate each time, anything, _anything_ to make it ease up even a little, but it wouldn’t – it _wouldn’t_ —

“I-I can’t…!” he gasped, out loud.

It was the first time he’d heard himself form words and not just noises in what felt like an eternity. His voice was hoarse, whimpering, and completely, completely broken. “I can’t… Shuichi… Maki Roll… I’m sorr… I’m not… I’m not…”

_…not strong enough, it hurts so freaking much, too much, I can’t take it any more, I just can’t, I can’t, I can’t…_

“It sounds like you have something to tell me.”

Kaito blinked, the world swimming into upside-down view, blurry from tears and agony. Takehira was there, squatting to his level and holding some kind of small, indistinct object in front of his face. Kaito couldn’t see it clearly, but he didn’t need to to know what it was. It was the bottle that made the pain stop.

It would make the _pain stop_ , so easy, so fast. It was _right there_.

He just – _fuck_ , he just wanted the pain to stop, so bad – _so bad_ …

But—

“N-No…” Kaito whimpered, closing his eyes to shut the antidote away from himself, his whole body shuddering with the knowledge of what this meant for him. “I wo… I won’t tell you… _nnnyyggh_ … I’m not gonna tell you… I’m not… I’m not…”

His words degenerated into wretched sobbing as he felt his body begin to twitch and jerk again, heralding a whole new wave of fresh, never-ending pain – _no_ , no more, he didn’t want it, he didn’t – but, but, _but_ …!

As Kaito felt his body writhe and thrash and scream all over again in even deeper agony, there was a strange kind of detachment in it that there hadn’t been until now. Something about it this time left him feeling infinitely less _helpless_ than he had every time before.

He hadn’t… he hadn’t given in.

 _He_ was still here – and still going through unbelievable suffering, but – not…

 _I’m not… I’m_ not _too weak to keep protecting them?_

The convulsion died down, the pain only barely receding as Kaito lay curled on his side, quietly whimpering from the agony of it all, the exhaustion, how terrified he was at the thought of this never, ever ending.

Yet, despite how pathetic that should have made him, despite his pain and his fear, despite _everything_ … he _was_ strong enough, after all?

He’d been so afraid, so _convinced_ that he’d break and tell the cult where to find his friends once the pain grew too overwhelmingly much to bear – and it _had_ , damn it, it really, _really had_ – but… he’d never so much as considered _actually telling them_ , not once. Not _ever_ , not even for a _second_ during this whole nightmare.

He still wouldn’t, even right now.

Carefully, experimentally, Kaito _tried_ to consider doing it – to just _think_ about telling them, nothing else – and his mind instantly veered away from the thought before he could even reach it. Even more tentatively, he tried to sweeten it – _but it’d stop hurting, if I_ – Nuh-uh. His thoughts simply refused to go there, never mind the agony he was in. It was like gravity was pulling him inexorably _away_ from it, trapping him in an inescapable orbit of keeping his friends safe.

He was never going to let them down. He was _never going to let them down._

His body jerked and writhed, flooding him with agony again. Kaito screamed between the contortions, not even bothering to try and hold them back any more; it was so much, _too_ much, he just wanted it to _end_ – but no, he didn’t, and he wouldn’t. He was never going to let his friends die, so he was _going_ to let this keep happening to himself, to keep enduring this, somehow, and that was all there was to it.

It still felt so impossible; he didn’t think he could ever, ever cope with agony this utterly awful, this unrelenting, for who knew how many more hours. _Nobody_ should ever have been expected to cope with this. But, damn it, no matter how impossible it was… for Shuichi and Maki Roll’s sake, for his best friends, Kaito was just going to have to _make it possible_.

Overcome with the pain, screaming and writhing and sobbing in futile attempts at relief… beneath it all, Kaito felt weirdly _invincible_. Not in that it didn’t hurt – _hell_ no, not even _remotely_ that – but in that he felt so absolutely certain that no amount of pain, no amount of fear, _nothing_ , could ever stop him from doing what mattered the most. He would fight this pain _forever_ if he had to, to protect his friends.

He… he was a hero.

 _This_ was what being a hero really was.

It had to be. How could it _not_? It was taking so much _strength_ for Kaito to keep fighting against such unbearable levels of agony and fear, knowing that he could make it all stop any time he wanted – but he _wouldn’t_ , not ever, not for that price.

_This is… isn’t this actually kind of amazing? Isn’t this the kind of strength heroes should be made of?_

Kaito had always felt like heroes could only truly call themselves _heroes_ if they didn’t even feel any kind of real pain or fear or weakness in the first place, but…

 _No, that’s_ wrong _, isn’t it? Isn’t it way more inspiring if it really is this_ difficult _?_

He’d always had it so stupidly _backwards_. There was nothing heroic in it if it wasn’t even a struggle at all. But this – _him_ – this was a hero, right here.

Through all his tortured, desperate screams, Kaito could _feel_ with each breath how hard he was fighting, how _strong_ he was being to endure this hell and just hold on at all, knowing that he was never going to stop no matter what, and – and it felt _exhilarating_. Before he knew it, he wasn’t even screaming, not really; his loud breaths had turned into forceful, roaring bursts of fiercely triumphant laughter.

_I’m a HERO! I’ve ALWAYS been a hero, this WHOLE TIME! I’m GONNA keep my friends safe, and there’s nothing ANYONE can do to stop me!_

As his whole body shook, but from wild _laughter_ rather than anything else, Kaito noticed Takehira shift in the corner of his vision, his mask tilting like he was looking at him funny or something. That should probably have been more concerning right now, but somehow it didn’t even really seem to matter. Kaito felt so freaking _amazing_ that the pain might as well have not even been there at all.

…Huh. This had _actually_ made the pain go away. That sure was nice… but there was no way this was gonna last, was there. It’d be back sooner or later.

_Hell, LET IT COME! I can HANDLE IT! I can handle ANYTHING!_

In amongst all this, he heard a voice – Takehira’s, probably on some kind of earpiece or something because it didn’t sound like he was talking to Kaito. “He’s about to break, any minute now. Get back in here and help him along.”

The words drew another loud giggle out of Kaito. _That idiot thinks I’m about to break, but it’s the opposite! They’re_ NEVER _gonna break me!_

Kaito almost wanted to _tell_ Takehira that, to brag about how unstoppable he was, to rub it in that stupid masked face that he’d always been _winning_ and was always _going_ to, but another thought stopped him. If Takehira realised how completely impossible it was to break Kaito… wouldn’t he just kill him?

 _Not_ an option, obviously. Kaito hadn’t even been to _space_ yet, and he was _gonna_ get there one day and it was gonna be _awesome_.

So, well, it wasn’t like this asshole and his henchmen even _needed_ to know how strong he was, right? Kaito had nothing to prove to these cowards. He already _knew_ he was a hero.

Then he might as well let them _keep thinking_ he was just about to break any minute now, so they’d stay focused on him and give his sidekicks more room to work freely to take this whole cult down. That wouldn’t be hard; all he had to do was pretend to be _weaker_ than he was, pretend to be…

His euphoria was beginning to die down, and the pain, the _agony_ , was making itself known again, far too starkly. Okay, geez, yes – this was, in fact, still _total hell_ ; there was absolutely no _pretending_ needed here to make it apparent just how much he was desperately suffering. And he was still so _afraid_ of continuing to hurt this much over and over for who knew how long – however long it took for his sidekicks to get here and end this, and not a moment less.

But Kaito knew he could do this. He was still scared, but so much _less_ so than before, because he wasn’t terrified of letting them down any more. There was a part of him that wanted to show that, to put on at least a little bit of a strong front, as much as he could, over this agony. But… it’d _hurt_ just as bad either way, so what’d be the point of wasting his strength on that? He needed every bit of it that he had just to hold on at all.

It still felt so dizzyingly impossible, endless hours more of this, being torn apart by twisting, wrenching convulsions where every single one felt like it would end him. But he’d made it _this_ far while not even believing he could make it anywhere at all, right? He was a hero; he was Kaito Momota – so it _had_ to be possible for him, somehow. _Hours_ were daunting as all hell, but… he could make it just a few more minutes, at least. And then a few more after that, and after that. That was all he had to do. One way or another, he’d _make it so_.

He’d do this, for Shuichi and Maki Roll’s sake. For his sidekicks, his best friends, his _fellow heroes_. If they could be heroes, he could be one too, for them.

And, hey… what the hell had Kaito been thinking earlier, acting like they’d never even been scared or hurt by anything they’d been through? Of _course_ they had!

_“O-Of course I’m really scared… of this whole situation we’re in. But… it makes me so happy to know that… I’m using my detective skills to save people’s lives. So, yes, I’m scared… but I don’t have any regrets.”_

_“It… wouldn’t have been strange if I broke during all the torture. But even so, I tried my best. And most importantly, if I broke, then… my best friend would have replaced me.”_

Clinging to these thoughts, these words, while swamped by his own agony, Kaito found they helped so much _more_ in giving him strength than back when he’d been thinking Maki Roll and Shuichi had never suffered at all. They’d been brave and strong and incredible, and he _knew_ he could be that, too. It didn’t _matter_ that he was still just as frightened, still in just as much pain as ever before – if his heroes could keep on fighting through this kind of thing, then surely Kaito could do the same.

Between his screams, he heard the creak of the door to the room opening again. He managed to twist his head around to look, seeing the robed legs of the henchmen coming back in, seeing those boots… and it suddenly hit Kaito what Takehira had meant earlier by ‘helping him along’ towards the breaking that he was never going to do. There was almost something _freeing_ about the frightened moans that escaped him as he watched the boots approach, moans that he didn’t even try to suppress, because no matter how scared he was, he knew he didn’t _need_ to.

_I can do this. I can do this I can do this I can do this I can do this I can do this…!_

And he _could_. Even as he shuddered and whimpered and gasped at each kick, it… didn’t seem to matter quite as much as he’d been afraid it would. It was worse, sure, but he was _already_ in unbelievable agony from the poison. How _much_ worse could a few kicks make it?

At least, it seemed that way, until one of the kicks hit Kaito right in his freshly-broken rib – ribs? – and a spike of dizzying, blinding agony managed to make itself heard above the rest. Okay, _shit_ , that… that one _was_ way, way worse, so much so that he almost, _almost_ thought he couldn’t take it all over again. Except he _could_ , because there was no other option, and because he _knew_ he could be a hero for his friends.

Kaito tried to curl up and press into the ground to protect his ribs from another blow like that, but the next time the poison wrenched him backwards against his will and exposed his chest, the boot jabbed right back into that exact same spot of lightning pain. He reeled from the agony, hating the cruel deliberation of it that had to have been Takehira’s.

Wait… was it? Was Takehira… actually joining in with this?

During the brief moments he could focus properly amongst the desperate writhing agony, Kaito tried to look, to see through the forest of robed legs kicking him – there was no-one standing back this time. It _was_ him.

Takehira was _scared_ of Kaito. He had to be, or why else would he be joining in with the torture now, when he’d always casually stood back like he didn’t even need to help? Hell, Kaito was beginning to get the sense, through his gasps and whimpers of anguish as the rest of the henchmen fervently kicked and stomped on him over and over again, that they were being even more vicious than they had been before – as if _all_ of them were scared.

They were scared of the fact that he still refused to break. They were scared of Shuichi and Maki Roll and the fact that they were going to take down this whole monstrous organisation any day now – and because Kaito and his defiance, his _strength_ , was the one thing standing in the way of these bastards escaping that fate, they were just as scared of _him_.

Kaito grinned to himself through his pain, just a little, using that thought to help him keep holding on despite the awful spiking agonies in his ribs. Everything he’d been put through in here, everything that had made him feel smaller and weaker and more and more helpless… they’d all felt like losses at the time, but really, he’d never lost once. The only thing his torturers had ever cared about was getting him to talk, and Kaito had refused, and _won_ , over and over again. This whimpering, writhing mess of helpless agony on the floor wasn’t really helpless at all, because he’d never lost control over the one thing that counted in this place: his _words_.

No matter how scared Kaito was – and he _was_ ; he was still so, so terrified of all of this – the villains were even more scared of him.

Just like they damn well should be. He was a _hero_.


	8. Chapter 7 – With Friends

“Drink it.”

Takehira was holding something in front of his face. They were the only ones in the room. Kaito didn’t remember how long ago the others had stopped kicking him and left – everything in his head was just a jumbled mess of pain, more pain, _so much_ pain, and nothing else but doggedly clinging to the thought that _heroes don’t give in, heroes don’t give in_.

But… the thing in front of him… it was the antidote.

A sudden spike of terror pierced him like he hadn’t felt in a long time. Had he told them after all and forgotten about it in this haze of agony?

No. _No_ , he couldn’t have, he _wouldn’t_ have. He was a hero. Heroes didn’t give in.

He shrank away from the bottle as much as he could. “No…” he croaked, his voice hoarse and barely audible after so much screaming. (He’d stopped bothering to do _that_ a while ago, too.) “No… I didn’t tell you… I didn’t…”

“There’s no _need_ for you to tell me any more.”

No need…? Because… Shuichi and Maki Roll… they’d already been…?

_No no no, please no, not that, not now, not after_ everything _—_

But then… why the antidote? Why would Takehira be so needlessly _kind_?

And… why did he seem so _nervous_?

“ _Drink_ it. I can’t have you squirming in pain right now.”

In an instant, Kaito put his mouth to the bottle and gulped down the bitter liquid without another thought. This… this meant that they were _here_ , he _knew_ it did, and he’d let his brain catch up with him and tell him why _later_. His friends, his _heroes_ had come to end this all. It’d be over soon.

It’d be _over_ soon.

Gradually, as the poison released him bit by bit, Kaito began to remember what it felt like to not be in constant mind-numbing agony. He rested his head against the ground to relax as much as he could, gasping in exhausted relief, closing his eyes and just savouring each moment as it brought yet more blissful easing of the pain.

His thoughts started to get clearer and sharper – a hell of a lot more than they had been, at any rate. Maki Roll and Shuichi… he was gonna see them again, real, real soon. They’d saved him from the worst of it already, just by making it here. His heroes.

He knew the pain wouldn’t go away completely, or even close – he was still so horribly injured – but this was so, so much better all the same. And it was _still_ easing up on him; so much of the agony had been the poison’s doing, and he’d just… got used to it, thought of it as normal. He never wanted to be used to this ever again.

While he was recovering, waiting for the poison to leave him completely, Kaito heard a sudden screech of feedback noise from the speaker over in the back corner of the room. And then, seconds later, a voice – a familiar, fiercely determined voice that made his heart just _leap_ —

“Children! Everyone who was once brought here against your will, listen to me!”

It was Maki Roll. She must have found whatever announcement system they used in here and hijacked it to broadcast everywhere, so that every one of the kids who were going through hell in this place could hear her.

“The others from your orphanages are already safe; you have nothing to fear any more. We’re here to save _you_ , but we can’t do it without your help. Don’t let them use you against us – use the skills you learned here against _them_! I know you never wanted this! They’ve tried to make you feel like getting out of here is impossible, but today, the impossible _is_ possible! All you’ve got to do is make it so! Your life is _yours_ to live!”

Kaito found himself breaking into a huge grin – like, an actual, warm, genuine _smile_ – for the first time since he’d ended up in this hellhole.

“And, Kaito?” added Maki Roll, her voice softer but no less determined. “We’re coming for you.”

_Damn_ , Kaito was so, _so_ proud of her. And of Shuichi, too, for getting them both to this point, for making it here even faster than Kaito had really been expecting. His chest swelled with deep, beautiful pride, blotting out even more of the pain. He had the best friends in the whole damn universe.

Somewhere amongst this, he felt something near his feet – Takehira was cutting through the ropes around his ankles with a knife. He looked at Kaito as he saw Kaito watching him. “No, they’re not,” he said. “ _You_ don’t have anything you can use against me.”

The ropes cut, Takehira was at Kaito’s head in one swift movement, hauling him into a sitting position and pressing the knife to his throat. “Stand up.”

Kaito’s brain finally, _finally_ caught up with him and supplied the reason why his friends being here to end this meant he’d been given the antidote. Takehira wanted a hostage to make his escape.

Kaito grimaced at the feeling of the cold steel at his throat, hating the way it shifted slightly against his skin with every rapid beat of his pulse. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already been brought to the brink of death far too many times in here – but there was a very different, more _conscious_ kind of fear involved when he knew the threat was finally genuine. Even if Takehira needed him alive to get out of this place, what about once he’d got clear of the authorities? Would… would he just—

The knife’s edge pressed against his skin even harder. “I said _stand_.”

All of a sudden, Kaito didn’t want to think; he just wanted to stand. Now that his legs could move separately from each other, it wasn’t so hard to get them under him, but as he tried to lever himself up without help from his arms, they buckled and faltered. Even with the poison gone, his whole body still ached _so damn much_.

Takehira had moved the knife just enough that it didn’t cut him as he fell, but now it went right back up to Kaito’s throat again. “ _Stand_ , you pathetic fool.”

As he took a few breaths, steeling himself to try again, Kaito had a moment to think after all. He probably _could_ stand, just about, if he gave it all of his strength – but why the hell _should_ he? He had nothing to prove to this bastard. And he was so _sick_ of being forced to do almost everything they wanted him to.

So he strained his legs, his body, like he was giving it his best shot, and then let himself falter again. “I can’t,” he rasped, panting. “It… it _hurts_ , dammit – I just… I just _can’t_ …”

He felt like he might have overdone that a little – but to be fair, it was only _slightly_ off from the truth. It really did freaking hurt, absolutely everywhere.

Takehira hissed in frustration, shifting the knife into his other hand. “Useless moron,” he muttered. Kaito groaned in further reawakened pain in his chest and ribs as he was grabbed by the arm restraints and hauled bodily upright. His feet dragged on the floor, his whole weight on Takehira behind him as they began to move towards the door.

The knife was still there, but not quite as tightly pressed to his throat any more. Carrying a person’s entire weight probably made holding a knife steady at the same time pretty difficult… huh.

Kaito allowed himself just a small grin through his pain and his fear as Takehira dragged him out into the corridor beyond. He had something here. He wasn’t sure exactly _what_ he was going to do with it yet, but it was something. Letting himself get lugged around like this without even resisting would normally have made him feel so pathetic and helpless, but not this time. Not when he knew he was keeping some strength in reserve, had just a little bit more control than it seemed.

And all because Takehira had bought his act of being weaker than this. That moron had been more than happy to underestimate Kaito’s strength, even though he’d definitely been _scared_ of it earlier. Almost like he was trying to hide from that and convince himself that Kaito couldn’t possibly be this strong at all.

Kaito chuckled inwardly. _I’m just someone who thinks he’s strong, huh? Yeah, screw that. You’re the one who_ ‘thinks’ _I’m_ weak _._

He was breathing in laboured, ragged gasps, only just barely managing to stay on top of the pain as they moved through the corridors. Being hefted around by the asshole who’d just been torturing him really wasn’t great for all his fractured and broken bones, and that wasn’t even getting into the lingering ache in his muscles from being pulled at by the poison for far too long. But no matter how exhausted he was, he could fight it, for just a little bit longer. He had to.

One way or another, Kaito wasn’t going to let himself die here. Not now that his friends were here for him, not after everything he’d endured. He was going to see Shuichi and Maki Roll, see them smile at him again. And one day, he was making it into space.

Through it all, he began to hear noises, the sounds of loud footsteps and shouting from rooms or floors away. The raid on this place must have been in full swing by now. Kaito really hoped the kids were taking Maki Roll’s words to heart and fighting back, and not letting themselves be used against their rescuers like… kinda like _he_ was right now.

As the noises grew closer – still distant, but they probably wouldn’t be soon – Takehira shifted so that his back was to the wall, sidestepping along it while holding Kaito out in front of him. Of course; Kaito wasn’t just a hostage, he was a human shield, too. _Coward. Well, I already knew that._

The footsteps got louder and louder, and suddenly government agents in body armour – police, something, it didn’t matter – were flooding in from one end of the corridor, guns held out in front of them. Kaito groaned from the jolting pain as Takehira twisted around, turning to face the agents with Kaito between them and him.

But it wasn’t just government agents here, Kaito realised – behind the front row that had guns out, also in bulletproof vests and helmets, it was… it was Maki Roll and Shuichi. They were here, too, staring at him with—

Kaito’s resolve almost faltered as he saw the horror on his friends’ faces at the state he was in. He must’ve looked even worse by now than he had in the mirror back then – but, no, that didn’t matter, did it? They knew, they had to know that it didn’t stop him from being a hero, right? This… this didn’t change anything.

Takehira jerked his hand roughly against Kaito’s collarbone, emphasising the knife at his throat. “Let me leave this place, without being followed, or this one dies.”

At his voice, Maki Roll’s eyes widened in dreadful realisation for just a split second before she covered it with her threatening mask, her face darkening more than ever. Shuichi just kept staring, at a loss.

The agents kept their guns trained on Takehira, but they remained where they were, letting him slowly inch backwards step by step, still carrying Kaito’s whole weight along with him. Maki Roll tensed, like she wanted to leap towards him all by herself, but Kaito caught her eye and gave a tiny, subtle shake of his head. He looked to both her and Shuichi, forcing some semblance of a determined grin. He couldn’t afford to speak, but Takehira couldn’t see his face from here, so he hoped the look in his eyes alone was enough to communicate something along the lines of: _Don’t worry. I’m gonna do something about this._

Takehira kept moving backwards down the corridor, taking him further and further away from his would-be rescuers. Kaito had seen, before Takehira had turned his back to it – there was a corner coming up. Maybe he could… maybe, maybe… He had to take the chance. He’d never get anywhere without being a little reckless.

Hell, he’d _missed_ getting to be reckless. It was about damn time.

The knife was still loose against his throat as they reached the corner and Takehira began to turn. Shifting around an entire person’s weight while turning a corner backwards clearly wasn’t an easy task, and as Takehira focused all his efforts on that, the knife moved further away from Kaito’s face, further, further, just enough…

Kaito went for it. Mustering his last reserves of strength, he got his feet under him, shoved Takehira backwards as hard as he could with his upper body while hooking a foot around one of the cultist’s legs and pulling forwards at the same time, tensing in fear of feeling the knife at his throat—

—but it didn’t come; he heard Takehira collapse behind him, just like he’d been hoping for. Kaito stumbled forwards in a shaky run, just wanting to get as far away from the knife as possible… which wasn’t very far, it turned out, as he listed sideways and collapsed against a wall after just a few metres.

But it was enough. The agents were rushing forwards now that they had an opening, and Takehira wouldn’t be able to get back to him in time.

Grinning just a little but so exhausted from that effort alone, Kaito felt himself begin to slide down the wall towards the floor – until suddenly, Shuichi was at his side, supporting him, keeping him steady. Some other agents had rushed past him as they came around the corner, but it didn’t matter. _Shuichi_ was here.

Panting for breath, Kaito lifted his head to look at his friend. “Sshhhwishy,” he mumbled. That hadn’t come out right, but it was okay. He knew.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Shuichi said. “I’m here.” He smiled at Kaito, almost looking… impressed? “Hey, you… saved yourself.”

Kaito smiled back as best he could before letting his head droop. He _had_ saved himself – just barely, at least. He couldn’t have done it on his own.

Takehira’s voice snapped him out of his chance to rest. “Stand down, Harukawa.”

Kaito looked up at where the cultist had fallen, seeing him surrounded by agents – and pinned down by Maki Roll, her knee in his chest, his own knife pointed at his throat. Maki Roll’s hand was shaking, her face twisted into a furious, desperate scowl. Kaito couldn’t even begin to imagine how much emotion she was hiding behind that. He’d only been tortured by that bastard for two days; Maki Roll had been put through hell by him for nearly half her _life_.

“Come on, Harukawa, stand _down_ , now, there’s a good girl,” Takehira insisted. Something about the _praise_ in those words made Kaito’s skin crawl more than anything the bastard had ever said to him.

Maki Roll grimaced for a moment, then glared back at him with even more intensity. “You don’t _control me_ any more!”

The knife shifted – she was going to – _no_ —

“Maki Roll…!” Kaito gasped out as loudly as he could.

She froze, and then turned to him, her mask falling away, leaving her lost and anxious like the child she’d once been. Kaito stared back at her urgently, trying to show in his eyes just how _proud_ he’d always been of her. He forced his voice to work with him here – he needed it, he needed _words_. “You are so… so much _stronger_ than him.”

It got through to her. Maki Roll became herself again, and she turned back to Takehira, flipped the knife in her grip, and hit him in the side of the head with the hilt. He went limp, his chest continuing to rise and fall. She was still staring at him as she stepped off his unconscious form, her expression unreadable.

The agents moved forward to handcuff Takehira, take him away, do whatever the hell they were going to do to make sure he got locked up for good. A couple more agents positioned themselves near Kaito and Shuichi, guns pointing outwards down both directions of the corridor, keeping them protected.

The threat was gone. It was over.

The rest of Kaito’s strength just left him all at once, and with a gasp of pain and exhaustion, his legs buckled, his whole weight falling onto Shuichi’s arms.

“ _Kaito!_ ” Maki Roll’s attention suddenly snapped to him, and she rushed over to catch him and help Shuichi lower him to sit on the floor. Pulling their helmets off, the two of them kneeled on either side of him, their faces full of worry as they began to fuss over him, gently inspecting the wounds all over his body and the ropes that were still trapping his arms behind his back.

Damn it, Shuichi and Maki Roll were right here; they were _right here_ …! Kaito felt a huge bubble of choking, indescribable emotion swell up in his chest, but it was trapped – it needed to get free. He struggled against his bonds with whimpers and grunts of sheer frustration, feeling them dig into his arms, feeling it jostle the pain in his ribs, and not even _caring_. He was so _sick_ of these stupid restricting ropes. It was _over_ ; he wanted them _gone_.

“Hold still!” he heard Maki Roll telling him. “I can free you, just… just hold on…”

With Shuichi’s hand on his shoulder, steadying him, Kaito forced himself to stop struggling. He felt Maki Roll cut through the ropes, felt Shuichi join her in untangling them, and then his arms were free – stiff and aching like hell, but _free_ – and the moment they were, he reached around his friends’ shoulders and pulled them both as close as he could, never mind the pain.

Somewhere in amongst all this, the emotion in his chest burst out at last, and without really having meant to, Kaito found himself breaking into huge, shuddering sobs.

It hit him with a note of panic that this was the first time he’d ever cried in front of them, but… but that was _okay_ , right? He’d seen Maki Roll cry for the first time only a few days ago, and that – he’d thought of it as a _good_ thing, a sign of her growth, that she was able to let down her guard and be that vulnerable around them – so…

“Shhhhh,” came Maki Roll’s voice in his ear, gentle and soothing, like she’d had a lot of practice at this, long ago. “It’s okay.”

It was okay, it was okay to be vulnerable, that didn’t change anything, and they… they knew that, didn’t they? Maki Roll and Shuichi, they were both hugging him back – carefully, not hard enough to make it really hurt more. Just… holding him, while he let everything out. It felt good. Warm. Secure. They were the best.

“I’ve got you, Kaito,” Maki Roll murmured. “We’ve got you.”

Kaito felt a hand grasp his hair and flinched violently with a sharp intake of breath _(no don’t)_ – and instantly Maki Roll removed her hand, and he could breathe again. She started stroking his back instead, which made his wounds sting a little, but it barely mattered among the rest of the pain. And it felt so much better. Gentle strokes, up and down, letting him slow his shaky breaths to match their rhythm. _It’s okay._

“We’re here for you,” Shuichi mumbled, buried in his shoulder – it kinda sounded like he was crying, too? “You’re safe now.”

Safe. Yeah – they were here, so he was safe. That checked out. And – and more importantly, _they_ were safe, Shuichi and Maki Roll. They were here, and safe, and _alive_ , not dead because Kaito was too weak to protect them. He clung to them even harder with another big sob, warm tears rolling down his face. He’d been strong enough after all.

“I di—” he tried, but the words caught in his sobs and the dryness of his throat. He sniffed, taking a few more breaths, willing his voice to co-operate; this was important, he needed to say it. “I di… I didn’t let you down.”

“Huh…?” He felt Shuichi hug him ever-so-slightly tighter, still not enough to hurt. “We never thought you would. We believed in you. Always.”

“Y-You did…?” Kaito mumbled, so faintly that it might have been lost amongst his sobbing. Now that he thought about it, yeah – of course they had. They were his _sidekicks_. They’d believed in him from the start, and they still did even now, despite what a pitiful mess he must’ve looked like on the outside. Being scared and vulnerable really _didn’t_ make him any less of a hero, did it? It only made him _more_ of one, to be able to fight through all that and still not give in. And they… Heh. They’d probably known that all along, hadn’t they. Kaito had been the only one who _hadn’t_.

He felt himself smile through his tears as he managed to mumble out the next, just-as-important words. “I’m… still a hero.” Because he _was_. He was.

“Of _course_ you are!” Shuichi agreed. “You must have been _so strong_ back there! I’m…” He broke off, like he wasn’t going to finish, but then he went ahead anyway. “I’m so proud of you, bro.”

_‘Bro’?_ This was… this was the first time Shuichi had ever called him that.

Kaito pulled out of the hug, just enough to stare at Shuichi in astonishment. Three years Kaito had been calling him ‘bro’, mostly as a way to help his sidekick feel like he’d always be there for him, but he’d never been expecting Shuichi to do the same in return. And yet…

Kaito broke into a fond grin, seeing Shuichi match it with his own teary-eyed smile, one that seemed to be saying something like, _It’s about time, right?_

Maki Roll’s hand cupped his face, gently turning him to look at her. Her gaze was full of concern, but she was smiling, like she was proud of him, too. “I knew _you’d_ still be in there,” she said. “I could see it in your eyes the moment we saw you.”

Yeah. Just like Maki Roll had been after everything they’d done to her, _he_ was still here. Hurt and shaken, definitely, but still Kaito Momota despite it all.

He took a glance down at his t-shirt. It was still just as ragged and bloodstained as before, but… that’d never meant the hero pattern wasn’t there.

Maki Roll lowered her hand, and he saw her smile fade a little. “You… did they give you _anything_ to eat or drink?”

Kaito winced as he gave a small shake of his head. Maki Roll’s expression hardened. “Of course they didn’t. Shuichi, your bag.”

“Ah, right…” Shuichi let go of Kaito for a moment to take off the backpack he was wearing and rummage through it. “I… we don’t have any food – we wanted to hurry – but… Here.” He pulled out a nearly full water bottle, unscrewed it and held it to Kaito’s mouth to let him gulp it down greedily. Kaito couldn’t exactly mind the help – his hands were probably still too shaky to do it himself.

“Take it slow,” said Maki Roll as he drank. “You don’t want to choke.” Not that she needed to tell Kaito that – he’d had enough water going the wrong way down his throat for a lifetime.

“Thank you,” gasped Kaito once he’d completely drained the bottle, his voice working way better now that his mouth wasn’t so dry. He knew it was really so much more than just the water he was thanking them for, too.

Shuichi was digging into his backpack again. “Ah, speaking of heroes…” He pulled something out, and Kaito could have almost laughed with joy as he saw his good old galactic jacket emerge. “I’ve been waiting to give this back to you.” Shuichi draped it over Kaito’s shoulders ceremoniously, resting his arm there as well and smiling. “Welcome back, bro.”

Kaito let out something halfway between a sob and a chuckle as he clung to the familiar purple folds. He drew the jacket closer around him, wrapping himself in the galaxies like some kind of cosmic comfort blanket – no, like a galactic hero’s _cape_. He really _was_ still a hero after all. Shuichi knew he was. Maki Roll held onto him again, leaning gently into his shoulder – she knew, too.

“I’m… sorry it took so long to get here,” Shuichi muttered out of nowhere, not quite meeting his eye when Kaito turned to him. “If… if I’d been faster, then you wouldn’t have…”

Kaito put an aching arm clumsily back around him. “Hey, stop that. Don’t apologise. No way you didn’t come as fast as you could, bro.”

It hit him all of a sudden – why had it never occurred to him before? – that his sidekicks must have been desperate to storm this place and rescue him the _second_ they’d realised what was happening to him, to hell with the investigation. But if they’d done that without backup, they’d have… Damn. Kaito hadn’t only been captured for information, but also as bait in a trap, hadn’t he? It hadn’t even crossed his mind until now.

“I’m… glad you didn’t come right away, y’know?” he added. They’d refused to fall for it, despite how unbearably worried they must’ve been. Kaito didn’t think he could ever have done the same if the roles had been reversed. Man, his sidekicks really were something else.

“It’s my fault,” said Maki Roll, shifting away from him a little. “I knew there was a chance this might happen to you, but I just ignored—”

Kaito’s other arm went right back around her. “Not you either, Maki Roll. Even if I’d known, I’da taken that risk, for you guys. And I… I’d do it again.” His chest twisted at the thought of it, his breathing getting faster – but it was _true_ , he _would_. “I-I mean, if I had to, t-to keep you guys safe.” (It was _okay_ to be afraid; that only made him _more_ of a hero…!) “I-I’d…”

“Hey, Kaito, _no_.” Shuichi was stroking his back just like Maki Roll had before, trying to calm his trembling. “Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s _over_.” Maki Roll laid a firm hand on the front of his shoulder, fixing him with a stern gaze. “Those _bastards_ can’t hurt you any more.”

“Y-Yeah,” Kaito muttered as he steadied his breathing, returning her gaze. He grinned. “Hey, same to you, Maki Roll. They can’t hurt _you_ any more. Or Harumi, or any of those kids.”

Maki Roll glanced away, a mix of emotions playing across her face. This hell had been her reality for so long that it must have been hard for her to accept it could finally be over – but Kaito could tell she _wanted_ to, and that was what mattered. “You’re… you’re right,” she said after a moment.

“Hey, c’mon, guys,” Kaito said to them. With some more awkward jerky movements of his arms – everything still hurt like crazy, but the pain didn’t matter nearly as much any more – he grabbed the edges of his jacket and wrapped it around his sidekicks’ shoulders as well. “Be more proud of yourselves! You’re both heroes, too!”

Maki Roll and Shuichi both looked at him, puzzled. They… really hadn’t figured that one out already?

“’Course you are!” Kaito insisted. “Heroes don’t gotta be perfect, yeah? They just gotta never give up. That’s all they gotta do, and _we did it_.”

The two of them finally answered his grin with smiles of their own, leaning in closer to him. “We did it,” Shuichi echoed, Maki Roll murmuring her agreement.

Kaito leaned in as well, pulling his jacket further around them both, resting his forehead against theirs in gratitude. They really were his heroes, the best friends in the universe – and, geez, seemed like he hadn’t quite fixed the waterworks just yet. But hey, by the sounds of it, both of them were giving him a run for his money in that department, too.

It’d been hell, for all of them in different ways – but it was over, and they were all still here.

They stayed like that, just holding each other and crying, for how long Kaito didn’t know – not long _enough_. Maki Roll pulled out of the hug only when one of the agents standing guard over them caught her attention. “The whole complex has been secured. All the kids are safe. We need to leave soon.”

Maki Roll turned back to Kaito. “Can… can you walk?”

Kaito nodded. He could, as long as they were there. Holding tightly onto both Maki Roll and Shuichi, still with his jacket slung around their shoulders, he let them help him slowly and carefully to his feet. It crossed his mind that, before all of this, he’d probably have been stubborn enough to try to stand up on his own, despite how injured he was. That notion seemed so strange and far away now – what’d be the point in hurting himself more, when his sidekicks were right here for him?

Even with their help, it took a lot out of Kaito; they couldn’t exactly miss his pained groan of exertion as the heaving put strain on his ribs. Up on his feet, he leaned almost all his weight on them, hanging his head for a moment to catch his breath.

“A-Are you sure about this?” Shuichi asked him, worried. On his other side, Maki Roll was giving him a pointed glance – Kaito knew that she totally could and would straight-up carry him out of there if he needed her to.

But he didn’t, not quite. Now that he was up, the pain wasn’t as harsh – he had just enough left in him for this, with their support. And even though it wouldn’t feel nearly as bad in Maki Roll’s arms, Kaito was so tired of being helpless. As long as he could, he wanted to get himself out of this stupid place with his _own_ strength, alongside that of his friends.

So he looked Maki Roll and Shuichi in the eye in turn, exhausted as hell, maybe, but still shooting them his same old heroic grin all the same. “Just try and stop me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If my take on Kaito here piqued your interest and you want to read more of my thoughts on his character, I have written absolutely tons of analysis about him, both on [the Kaito tag on my main tumblr blog](https://elyvorg.tumblr.com/tagged/kaito-momota) (in between a lot of art), and especially on [my sideblog](https://commentaryvorg.tumblr.com/v3-masterlist) (as part of a non-blind commentary playthrough of the entirety of V3).


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